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KV 


AUTHOR: 


PAGET,  VIOLET 


TITLE: 


VITAL  LIES. 


PLACE: 


LONDON 


DATE: 


1912 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 

BIBLIOnR  APHIC  MICROFORM  TARHFT 


Master  Negative  # 

3/ -8011^-3 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


149.9 
P147 


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Mew  York,  John  Lane  company;  [etc.,  etc.]  1912 


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Humanism.  misunderstood.    The  rehabilitation  of  obscurity. 

1.  Truth.    2.  Pragmatism.         i.  Title. 

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^.'-i^  -r  r^ii!rrrs(*i'''if-*?f«s«f^  -«,-.— -^---v-«i-.*. . 


IVORKS  BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

HORTUS  VIT^,  Or,  THE  HANGING 
GARDENS 

THE  ENCHANTED  WOODS 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  ROME 

HAUNTINGS:  FANTASTIC  STORIES 

THE  SENTIMENTAL  TRAVELLER 

POPE  JACYNTH  AND  OTHER  FAN- 
TASTIC TALES 

GENIUS  LOCI :  NOTES  ON  PLACES 

LIMBO,    AND    OTHER    ESSAYS,    to 

WHICH  IS  ADDED         ARIADNE       IN 

MANTUA 

LAURUS  NOBILIS:  CHAPTERS  ON 
ART  AND  LIFE 

RENAISSANCE,  FANCIES  AND 
STUDIES 

THE  COUNTESS  OF  ALBANY 

ALTHEA:  DIALOGUES  ON  ASPIRA- 
TIONS  AND  DUTIES 

VANITAS :  POLITE  STORIES,  includ- 
iNG  A  FRIVOLOUS  CONVERSA- 
TION 

BEAUTY  AND  UGLINESS 


VITAL  LIES 

STUDIES  OF  SOME 
VARIETIES  OF  RECENT 
OBSCURANTISM   »  »    €S 


BT 


VERNON  LEE 


'1  ?yi) 


VOL.  I 


LONDON:   JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY   HEAD 
NEW    YORK:    JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 
TORONTO:     BELL  &  COCKBURN  MCMXII 


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How  then  may  we  devise  one  of  those  falsehoods  in 
the  hour  of  need,  I  said,  which  we  lately  spoke  of— just 
one  royal  lie  [yevycuoy  rt  iv  yj/evSofiivovs]  which  may 
deceiTe  the  rulers,  if  that  be  possible,  and  at  any  rate 
the  rest  of  the  city  ? 

Plato,  Republic,  iii.  414 

(Jowett's  Translation). 

Relling.  I'm  fostering  the  vital  lie  in  him. 
Gregirs.  Vital  lie  ?    Is  that  what  you  said  ? 
Helling.  Yes— I  said  vital  lie— for  illusion,  you  know, 
is  the  stimulating  principle. 

Ibsen,  The  Wild  Duck. 


V.  I 


.'  •  ». -•   • 


Titmbull  drf  SpiakSr^tfkHrs;  Eiinburgh^ 


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>; 


ci 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  MY  FRIEND 
GIOVANNI  VAILATI 

WHO,  BETTER  THAN  ANYONE  ELSE,  EXPLAINED 

THE  INCOMPATIBILITY  BETWEEN 

"  WILLING  TO  BELIEVE" 

AND 

"MAKING  ONE'S  IDEAS  CLEAR" 


I 


A 


n 


PREFACE 

SCIENCE  is  for  ever  invalidating  some  part  of 
its  statements,  because  it  is  for  ever  perfecting 
their  whole  ;  and  reason,  as  it  develops,  takes 
its  own  self  as  subject  for  its  criticism,  asking,  with 
Berkeley,  Hume  and  Kant,  and  now  with  the  Prag- 
matism of  Peirce  :  What  can  we  know  ?  or  rather, 
How  do  we  know  ?  Encouraged  by,  and  taking  advan- 
tage of  this,  the  minds  reluctantly  shaken  in  their 
rehgious  habits,  are  la3ring  about  them  for  excuses  to 
disbeheve  whatever  has  made  them  unbeUevers.  They 
allege  reason's  criticism  of  its  own  nature  and  methods 
to  discredit  reason's  conclusions.  They  argue  that  if 
reUgion  is  made  by  man  it  must  be  worth  re-making. 
Philological  exegesis,  anthropological  study  of  myths 
and  institutions,  psychology  and  metaphysical  analysis, 
and  all  the  sciences  which  have  undermined  what 
used  to  be  called  religious  truths,  are  now  invoked  to 
re-instate  some  portion  of  them  in  the  garb  of 
desirable  and  valuable  errors. 

Some  of  these  thinkers,  unable  to  maintain  that  the 
ideas  which  they  chng  to  are  true,  put  their  backs  to  the 
wall  and  explain  that  their  value  is  symboHc,  mythical, 
in  short,  dependent  upon  their  being  partially  false. 

vii 


f  I 


^1 


Another  group — or  the  same  group  at  another  moment 
— refuse  to  forgo  the  compelling  power,  or  at  least 
the  reassuring  sound,  of  the  word  true;  and  these 
apply  their  logic  to  re-defining  truth  in  such  a  way 
as  to   include   edifying   and   efficacious  fallacy  and 

falsehood. 

It  is  to  both  these  groups,  and  any  cross-groups 
derived  from  them,  that  I  venture  to  apply  the  name 
of  Obscurantists,  because  they  employ,  they  increase, 
and,  for  emotional  and  sometimes  aesthetic  reasons, 
they  prefer,  a  certain  amount  of  darkness,  or  at 
all  events,  a  convenient,  a  reposeful,  a  suggestive 
intellectual  penumbra. 

Moreover,  these  thinkers  have  attached  themselves, 
without  exception,  to  the  philosophical  school  which 
makes  Life  the  central  and  ultimate  and  paramount 
mystery.  Hence  I  take  the  Uberty  of  symbohzing 
the  various  vague  creeds  (clung  to  by  themselves,  or 
recommended  for  the  use  of  others)  of  these  intellectual 
Obscurantists  in  the  formula  given  by  Ibsen's  Doctor 
RelUng,  and  caUing  them,  and  these  studios  of  them, 
"  Vital  lies." 

» 

March  1912. 


N 


THEMATIC  TABLE  OF 
CONTENTS 


VOL.  I 


FIRST  PART 
THEORETICAL  OBSCURANTISM 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  TWO  PRAGMATISMS 

Distinguishes  the  Pragmatism  intended  to  "make  our 
ideas  clear  "  from  the  Pragmatism  intended  to  justify  the 
"will  to  believe." 


PAQS 

7 


CHAPTER  II 


WHAT  IS  TBUTH? 


50 


Deals  with  the  "will  to  believe"  or  "what  it  would 
be  better  to  believe,"  distinguishing  such  obscurantist 
Pragmatism. 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  TRUTHS  OF  MYSTICISM 

Shows  what  sort  of  ideas  are  considered  "  better  to 
believe  "  and  recommended  to  our  "  will  to  believe,*' 


91 


•iujh 


Vital  Lies 


CHAPTER  IV 


FRUITS  FOR  LIFE  .  •  •  * 

Shows  that  obscurantism  turns  to  profit  not  the  truth 
of  ideas,  but  their  power  of  determining  action. 

SECOND  PART 

APPLIED  OBSCURANTISM 
CHAPTER  I 

FATHER  TYRRELL  AND  MODERNISM 

Shows  the  "  will  to  beUeve  "  in  its  most  candid  and 
respectable  form,  the  believer  being  hoodwinked  by  his 
own  imperfectly  recognized  desires  and  habits. 

VOL.  II 
CHAPTER  II 

MR  CRAWLEY  AND  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  APOLOGETICS 

Shows  the  man  of  science  recommending,  as  racially 
beneficial,  boUefs  of  which  he  has  himself  demonstrated 
the  origin  in  the  superstitions  of  primitive  man. 

CHAPTER  III 

MONSIEUR  SOREL  AND  THE  SYNDICALIST  MYTH 

Shows  the  philosophical  and  practical  Moralist  pro- 
claiming  that  only  a  myth,  because  it  can  never  be 
realized,  is  productive  of  a  sufficient  increment  of  virtue. 


FAOR 

145 


161 


61 


Vital  Lies 


THIRD  PART 


EPILOGUE 


CHAPTER  I 


TRUE   IN  SO  FAR  AS  MISUNDERSTOOD 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  REHABILITATION  OF  OBSCURITY 


CHAPTER  III 


HUMANISM 


XI 


PAOB 

121 


149 


186 


/ 


I  PART  I 

'^  /  THEORETICAL  PRAGMATISM 


•nnMamHMMi 


) 


\ 


\    \ 


i 


INTRODUCTION  TO  PART  I 

FIRST  of  aU  let  me  explain  that  the  whole  of 
this  first  half  of  the  present  book  was  written- 
indeed,  some  of  it  was  ahreadv  in  type  (for  the 
North  American  Review)~betoK  the  death  of  the  late 
Professor  WiUiam  James.    And  of  this  I  am  glad  (even 
though  I  wince  at  the  ungraciousness  of  a  posthumous 
attack),  because  the  recent  loss  of  a  man  so  genial  in 
the  German  as  weU  as  the  English  sense  of  the  word  so 
impulsively,  generously  appreciative  and  creative,  wo'uld 
have  made  it  utterly  impossible  for  me  to  discuss  his 
works  (if  indeed  at  all !)  in  the  tone  I  have  adopted 
Now  this  tone  is  the  only  one  in  which  such  highly 
personal  and  personally  self-contradictory  improvisa- 
tions could  be  discussed  without  absurdity,  at  least 
by  a  reader  who,  hke  myself,  was  fuU  of  mixed  and 
warrmg  admiration  and  aversion  for  their  most  mixed 
and  warring  ideas. 

Similarly.  I  want  it  to  be  thoroughly  understood 
that  m  deahng  with  the  work  of  the  late  Professor 
James  I  am  attacking  and  condemning  only  that "  WiU- 
to-Beheve  "  element  with  which  this  very  suggestive 
and  dehghtful  thinker  has,  in  my  opinion,  alloyed,  de- 
based, diminished  so  much  of  his  own  inteUectual  wealth 


Vital  Lies 


It  has  been  pointed  out  to  me  that  this  inferior,  and, 
I  think,  worthless  admixture  in  Professor  James's 
work  was  due  to  a  certain  lack  of  grip  and  continuity 
and  order  which  was  the  drawback  of  the  spon- 
taneity and  impulsive  appreciativeness,  the  passionate 
hmnanness,  of  his  mind.  Of  course  a  greater  grip  and 
continuity  and  order,  a  greater  hardness  (to  use  his 
favourite  expression)  would  have  saved  him  from  the 
**  Will-to-Beheve  "  (both  as  a  formulated  theory  and  as 
an  insidious  mental  practice),  even  as  a  better  state 
of  health  may  defend  you  from  infection  which  is,  as 
people  say,  in  the  air.  But  the  infection,  the  microbe, 
is  not  the  same  thing  as  the  patient's  congenital 
weakness  and  momentary  being  below  par.  And  so, 
although  his  naturally  discontinuous,  diffluent  thought 
and  his  more  and  more  tentative  and  hurried  exposition 
and  expression  undoubtedly  destined  Professor  James 
to  become  the  most  illustrious  victim  of  this  intellectual 
epidemic,  and  also  one  of  its  chief  centres  of  infection, 
the  "  Will-to-BeUeve  "  virus  would  have  existed  and 
made  havoc  in  latter-day  thought  if  Professor  James  had 
not  been  there  to  give  it  its  name  and  to  display,  even 
in  his  own  person,  its  various  distinctive  phases.  Now 
it  is  merely  because  this  "  Will-to-BeUeve  "  philosophy 
is  nowadays  rife  on  every  side  that  I  am  dealing  with 
Professor  James  ;  and  I  am  deahng  with  him,  as  already 
remarked,  only  in  so  far  as  the  chief  exponent  and  the 
chief  example  of  this  particular  intellectual  tendency. 


Introduction  to  Part  I        5 


Furthermore,  I  wish  to  premise  that  it  is  also  because 
of  the  value  of  that  part  of  Pragmatism  which  Pro- 
fessor James  (and  also  Doctor  Schiller)  took  over  from 
Mr.  C.  S.  Peirce,  that  it  seems  to  me  necessary  to  airaign 
Pragmatism  as  a  whole  for  the  adoption  of  that  alien 
and  hostile  element  of  "  Will-to-Believe  "  with  which 
these,  the  two  chief  theoretical  Pragmatists,  have  con- 
fused and  corrupted  it.     It  is  only  when  we  have  done 
with  the  Pragmatism  of  James  and  Schiller  that  we 
can  duly  value  and  put  to  use  the  Pragmatism  of 
Peirce.     And  by  Pragmatism  of  Peirce  I  mean,  in  this 
connection,  a  great  deal  which  has  been  added  to  it 
by  James  and   Schiller,   inasmuch   as  disciples  and 
legitimate  successors  of  Peirce,  but  which  both  James 
and  Schiller  have  turned  into  an  unusable  confusion 
by  this    admixture    of    their    principle   of   "Will-to 
Beheve"   with   Peirce's   principle  for   "making   our 
ideas  clear." 

Finally,  and  before  entering  on  this  examination, 
I  would  on  no  account  omit  to  acknowledge  all  the 
help  in  clearing  up  my  own  ideas  upon  this  subject 
which  I  have  received  from  the  writings  and  the  con- 
versation of  the  late  Giovanni  Vailati,  and  from  those 
of  his  collaborator  and  editor,  Mario  Calderoni. 

Maiano,  neab  Florencb, 
March  1912. 

The   posthumous    volume   of   "  Sorittl  di    Giovamil    Vailati" 
(Florence,  Leipzig,  1911)  contains  all  the  many  papers  originally 


Vital  Lies 


published  in  Mind,  in  the  Monist,  in  the  Bevue  du  Mots,  in  the 
Journal  of  Philosophij,  in  the  Leonardo,  in  the  Rivista  di  Psicologia 
Applicata,  etc.,  wherein  Giovanni  VailatI  discussed  the  formula 
and  method  of  Ch.  S.  Peirce  and  their  various  applications  and 
misapplications. 

The  "how  to  make  our  ideas  clear"  side  of  Pragmatism  is 
further  represented  in  articles  in  the  Leonardo  (1904-6)  by  Mario 
Calderoni ;  and  in  M.  Calderoni's  "  Disarmonie  Economiche  e 
Disarmonie  Morali  "  (Florence,  Lumachi,  1906),  in  "  La  Provision 
dans  la  th^orie  de  la  Connaissance "  {Rev.  de  Met.  et  de  Morale, 
1907),  and  in  "  I'Arbitrario "  {Rivista  di  Psicologia  Applicata, 
March-April  1910,  May-June  1910,  September-October  1910),  by 
Vailati  and  Calderoni. 

Giovanni  Vailati  was  born  in  Lombardy  hi  1863,  and  died  at 
Rome  in  1909. 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  TWO  PRAGMATISMS 


** .  .  .  The  first  part  of  the  essay,  however,  is  occupied  with 
showing  that,  if  Truth  consists  in  satisfaction,  it  cannot  be  any 
actual  satisfaction,  but  must  be  the  satisfaction  which  wovld 
ultimately  be  found  if  the  inquiry  were  pushed  to  its  ultimate 
and  indefeasible  issue.  This,  I  beg  to  point  out,  is  a  very  difiFerent 
position  from  that  of  Mr  Schiller  and  the  Pragmatists  of  to-day .  .  .  . 
Their  avowedly  undefinable  position,  if  it  be  not  capable  of  logical 
characterization,  seems  to  me  to  be  characterized  by  an  angry 
hatred  of  strict  logic,  and  even  some  disposition  to  rate  any  exact 
thought  which  interferes  with  their  doctrines  as  all  humbug.  .  .  . 
It  seems  to  me  a  pity  they  should  allow  a  philosophy  so  instinct 
with  life  to  become  infected  with  seeds  of  death  in  such  notions  as 
that  of  the  unreality  of  all  ideas  of  infinity  and  that  of  the  mutability 
of  truth,  and  in  such  confusions  of  thought  as  that  of  active  willing 
(willing  to  control  thought,  to  doubt,  and  to  weigh  reasons)  with 
willing  not  to  exert  the  will  (willing  to  believe)." — Charles  S. 
Peirce,  Hibbert  Journal,  Vol.  II.,  No.  1  (October  1908),  pp. 
Ill,  112. 

IN  the  following  pages  I  shall  try,  in  vulgar  parlance, 
to  show  up  what  is  nowadays  being  rather  pressed 
upon  our  acceptance  than  offered  for  our  inspec- 
tion, under  the  ambiguous  name  of  "  Pragmatism."  I 
would  therefore  premise  that  I  am  by  no  means  attack- 
ing all  the  ideas  connected  with  the  doctrine  so  called, 
nor  even  the  bulk  thereof.    The  pecuHarity  of  Prag- 


■^ra 


matism  is  (as  I  hope  to  demonstrate)  its  tactics  of 
advancing   untenable   propositions   and   faUing   back 
upon  received  ones ;   its  shuflling  the  principle  which 
IS  hard  to  accept  in  a  handful  of  principles  we  have 
willingly  accepted ;    its  medium-hke  device  (for  only 
successive  metaphors  can  illustrate  habits  so  Protean) 
of  shpping  a  hand  out  of  the  seemingly  unbroken  circle 
of  concatenated  thought,  in  order  to  produce  aU  manner 
of  new  and  desirable  manifestations.    And,  for  this 
reason,  two-thirds  of  aU  that  Pragmatists  adduce  is 
not  only  a  re-statement— sometimes  a  really  improved 
and  enlarged  re-statement-of  their  opponents'  views, 
but  embodies,  most  admirably  stated,  the  very  argu- 
ments   those    opponents   have   used    against    them. 
Indeed,   as  we  shaU  see,  the  name  of  Pragmatism 
18  now  taken   by  a  doctrine  which  the  inventor  of 
that  name,  the  much-quoted  and  Httle-read  Charles 
Sanders    Peirce,    forestalled   only   to    denounce    and 
demoKsh. 

The  result  of  aU  this  is  that  I  wish  to  premise  that  I 
am  attacking,  not  certain  books,  with  two-thirds  of 
whose  contents  I  concur;    stiU  less  certain  writers 
from  whose  analytic  talent  (in  the  case  of  Mr  F.  C 
Schiller),   from  whose  wide-sweeping  genius  (in  the 
case  of  Professor  W.  James)  I  have  derived  so  much 
advantage ;    least  of  all,  the  whole  mass  of  doctrine 
labeUed    Pragmatism.      I    am    attacking    the   views 
which  put  Pragmatism  and  Pragmatists  in  opposition 


1 


H 


The  Two  Pragmatisms       9 

to  every  other  existing  or  conceivable  philosophy. 
Or,  rather,  I  am  attacking  a  particular  temperament 
which,  imported  into  philosophy  from  wholly  different 
fields  of  thought,  tests  truth  by  the  standards  of  worldlv 
practicaHty,  of  moral  edification,  and  of  religious  senti- 
ment, and  thereby  passes  off  as  true  what  may  be 
merely  useful  or  inspiriting  delusions,  merely  practi- 
cally serviceable,  emotionally  satisfying,  or  morally 
commendable  figments. 

For,  at  the  bottom  of  this  kind  of  Pragmatism, 
which  the  more  illustrious  of  its  two  promoters  has 
associated   with   the   expression    "  Will-to-BeUeve "  i 

^^  *  Professor  James  SQems  anxious  to  withdraw  the  expression 
I'  will-to-believe  "—telling  us  ("  Pragmatism,"  page  258)  that  he 
"unluckily"  gave  that  name  to  an  essay  of  which  the  critics 
(presumably  the  present  writer  in  a  "Fortnightly"  article,  re- 
printed in  "  Gospels  of  Anarchy  ")  neglected  the  meaning  in  order 
to  "  pounce  down  on  the  title."    Professor  James,  in  the  same 
place,  now  defines  the  subject  of  that  essay  as  the  "Right-to- 
BeUeve."      "  Right-to-believe,"  in  plain  English,  usually  means 
the  existence  of  an  intellectual  alternative,  i.e.  :    "In  the  face  of 
So-and-so's  evidence,  I  have  the  right  to  believe  that  what  hap- 
pened  was  this."     Or  else  the  absence  of  coercion  by  the  State : 
"  in  this  country,  people  have  the  right  to  believe  as  they  choose  "  ; 
i.e.  differences  of  opinion  are  tolerated  by  the  laws  and  customs. 
What  Professor  James  argued  for  in  that  "  Will- to- Believe  "  essay 
was  the  expediency,  the  occasional  personal  or  moral  advantage 
(exemplified  by  the  courage  of  men  who  believe  they  can  r^ist 
brigands,  and  the  difference  in  our  conduct  due  to  religious  belief) 
of  accepting  a  hypothesis  on  other  than  intellectual  grounds.     Of 
these  he  wrote  ("  WiU-to-Believe,"  page  9) :   "  It  is  only  our  dead 
hypotheses  that  our  willing  nature  is  unable  to  bring  to  life  again. 
.  .  .  When  I  say  '  willing  nature,'  I  do  not  mean  only  such  de- 
liberate volitions  as  may  have  set  up  habits  of  belief  that  we  cannot 


^B! 


■"»««««'»~^ 


;..«»»^.iy^».-»...^.-g8'... 


lO 


Vital  Lies 


-at  the  bottom    of    "WiU-to-Believe"    Pragmatism 
there  exist  the  psychological  recognition  of  the  in- 
evitable presence,  and  the  morahst's  recognition  of  the 
occasional  utiUty,  of  ideas,  of  opinions,  of  beUefs,  which 
have  not  passed  muster  as  true  ;   the  recognition  that 
conduct  is  frequently  based,  and  can  sometimes  be 
based    with   advantage,  on  what  has  not  yet  been 
tested  as  true,  on  what  has  not  stood  the  test  of  truth, 
or  what  it  is  only  wished  should  be  true-viz.,  hypo- 
theses,  assumptions,    misconceptions,    misstatements, 
ambiguities,  delusions  and  deceptions,  a  large  proportion 
of  which  appears  inevitable  and  perhaps  indispensable 
in  the  Hfe  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.    The 
recognition  and  partial  rehabilitation  of  this  particular 
not-true  element  would  show  the  superior  acumen  and 
superior  sincerity  of  modem  psychology  and  of  modem 
ethics.    Indeed,  the  progress  of  mental  science  and  of 
utiHtarian   morals  might  culminate  in  some   bolder 
Nietzsche   proclaiming   that   tmth   is    by  no  means 
the  one  thing  requisite ;  that  hfe  has  been  rendered 

now  escape  from.     I  mean  aU  such  factors  of  belief  aa  fear  and 
hope,    prejudice   and    paaeion,    imitation   and   partisanship,    the 
circumpr^ure  of  our  caste  and  set."    This  "  wiUing  nature  "  is 
presumably   what  Professor  James  referred  to  in  his  title  "  WiU- 

h^^:^.  ^:;^.^  '^^  °^^  ^^°«^  °^*^^  ^^  ^  subsequent 
books  IS  the  addition  of  "  truth  "  as  weU  as  "  belief  "  being  de- 
pendent on  such  action  of  our  "  willing  nature."  I  consider  it  fair 
to  contmue  to  designate  his  particular  kind  of  Pragmatism  by 
that  ex- title  of  his.  "  Will-to-BeUeve."  which  I  always'take  in  the 
sense  of     willmg  nature  "  as  defined  in  the  above  paLge 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     1 1 

liveable,  and  morahty  itself  floated  or  ballasted  only 
by  a  fortunate  output  of  figment. 

But  the  "  Will-to-Believe "  Pragmatists  are  not 
bolder  than  Nietzsche.  They  are,  on  the  contrary 
(as  persons  concerned  with  practicality  should  be), 
most  remarkably  attached  to  consequences,  to  work- 
able systems  and  moral  edification  ;  and,  for  the  benefit 
of  these,  they  are  most  conspicuously  careful  of  not 
coming  into  open  collision  with  established  prejudices. 
Now,  while  triUh  is  by  no  means  always  necessary  for 
advantageous  and  commendable  practice,  untruth  or 
non-truth  (under  any  of  its  varieties  and  synonyms 
furnished  forth  by  the  invaluable  Roget)  happens  to 
be  hampered  by  a  tiresome  and  paradoxical  peculiarity  : 
its  utiUty,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  depends  upon  hiding 
its  own  status  and  keeping  up  the  credit  of  trath.  \  A 
hope  is  not  a  hope,  a  fear  is  not  a  fear,  once  either  is 
recognized  as  unfounded.  An  ambiguity  is  acceptable 
only  if  it  is  accepted  in  one  of  its  ambiguous  meanings. 
A  delusion  is  delusive  only  so  long  as  it  is  not  known 
to  be  one.  A  mistake  can  be  built  upon  only  so  long 
as  it  is  not  suspected  ;  and  that  consoling,  encouraging, 
sometimes  salutary  and  edifying  figment  which  Ibsen 
christened  "  Vital  Lie  "  can  be  fife-enhancing  or  fife- 
saving  only  when  it  is  mistaken  for  a  **  Vital  Tmth.'v 

The  psychologists  and  morafists  who,  under  the  name 
of  Pragmatists,  are  teaching  the  unavoidable  presence 
and  the  practical  benefits  of  a  "  Will-to-Befieve,"  have 


12 


Vital  Lies 


I' 


therefore  veUed  in  judicious  silence  the  disconcerting, 
the  dangerous,  the  inunoral  fact  that  error,  delusion 
and  deception,  when  bom  of  human  needs  and  pur- 
poses, are  occasionaUy  efficacious  in  directing  human 
decisions,  in  regulating  human  conduct,  and  in  maldng 
human  life  possible.    The  Pragmatists  have  refused 
to  proclaim  the  value  of  what  is  possibly  not  true,  and 
they  have  appUed  themselves  to  identifying  thM  which 
possesses  value  with  truth  itself.    This  they  have  done 
by  laying  hold  of  a  philosophical  principle  to  which  its 
earliest  formulator,  Mr  Charles  Sanders  Peirce,  had 
given  the  name  of  "  Pragmatism  " ;  and  by  converting 
this  pnnciple,  by  endless  moves  revoked  whenever 
detected,  mto  the  very  thing  which  that  proto-Prag- 
matist  had  invented  Pragmatism  to  expose,  disprove 
confute  and  reduce  for  ever  to  silence. 

Let  us  foUow  this  process,  and  in  so  doing  obtain,  not 

merely  a  knowledge  of  the  chief  peculiarities  of  "  WiU- 

to-Beheve  "  Pragmatism,  but  an  insight  also  into  the 

Will-to-Beheve,"  the  Pragmatistic,  temper  of  mind 

and  methods. 


II 

Professor  James  heralds  his  exposition  of  the  prag- 
matic pnnciple  by  telling  us  that,  although  only  f ormu- 
lated  by  Mr  Peirce  in  the  article  entitled  "  How  to 
Make  Things  Clear,"  it  has  been  tacitly  applied  by 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     13 

the    chief   masters  of   British   thought.      He   writes 
("  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  page  443) : 

"  The  guiding  principle  of  British  philosophy  has  in 
fact  been  that  every  difference  must  make  a  difference, 
every  theoretical  difference  issue  in  a  practical  difference, 
and  [that]  the  best  method  of  discussing  points  of 
theory  is  to  begin  by  ascertaining  what  practical  differ- 
ence would  result  from  one  alternative  or  the  other 
being  true.  What  is  the  particular  truth  in  question 
known  as  ?  In  what  facts  does  it  result  ?  What  is 
its  cash- value  in  terms  of  particular  experience  ?  This 
is  the  characteristic  English  way  of  taking  up  a  ques- 
tion. In  this  way,  you  remember,  Locke  takes  up  the 
question  of  personal  identity  :  *  What  you  mean  by  it 
is  just  your  chain  of  particular  memories,'  says  he. 
That  is  the  only  verifiable  part  of  its  signifi,cance.  All 
further  ideas  about  it,  such  as  the  oneness  or  the  many- 
ness  of  the  spiritual  substance  on  which  it  is  based  are, 
therefore,  void  of  intelligible  meaning,  and  propositions 
touching  such  ideas  may  be  indifferently  affirmed  or 
denied.  So  Berkeley  with  his  *  Matter.'  The  cash- 
value  of  matter  is  our  physical  sensations.  That  is 
what  it  is  known  as,  all  that  we  concretely  verify  of  its 
conception.  That,  therefore,  is  the  whole  meaning  of 
the  term  '  Matter  ' ;  any  other  pretended  meaning  is 
mere  wind  of  words.  Hume  does  the  same  thing  with 
Causation.  It  is  known  as  habitual  antecedence,  and 
as  tending  on  our  part  to  look  for  something  definite 


H 


Vital  Lies 


to  come.  Apart  from  this  practical  meaning  it  has 
no  significance  whatever,  and  books  about  it  may  be 
committed  to  the  flames,  says  Hume." 

Throughout  this  quotation  we  are  shown  the  prag- 
matic method  applied  to  ascertain  the  contents  of  a 
thought  as  a  prehminary  to  testing  that  thought's 
truth.    Professor  James  represents  Locke  and  Berkeley 
and  Hume  as  refusing  to  discuss  severally  Human 
Identity,  Matter  and  Causation,  except  in  so  far  as 
each  of  these  words  can  be  translated  into  terms  of 
experience.     Pragmatism  is  being  employed,   as  the 
title  of  Mr  Peirce's  famous  article  has  it,  "to  make 
our  ideas  clear."    The  expression  "practical  differ- 
ence "  means  in  this  connection  difference  in  the  facts y 
in  the  experience,  implied  in  the  definition  :  so  when  we 
say  that  the  concept  "  match,"  imphes  the  property 
of  igniting,  cceteris  paribus,  on  friction  with  a  specified 
surface,  we  verify  whether  a  certain  object  is  a  match 
by  rubbing  it,  cceteris  paribus,  against  such  a  surface 
and  watching  whether  it  does   or  does  not  ignite. 
"  Practical  difference  "  refers  to  our  real  or  imagined 
experiment ;  and  the  "  cash-value  in  terms  of  experi- 
ence "  means  the  translation  of  an  abstract  statement 
into  such  inferred  results  as  will  by  their  happening 
or  not  happening  declare  whether  that  abstract  state- 
ment is  in  the  particular  relation  to  objective  reahty 
which  we  designate  as  truth.    The  pragmatic  method, 
as  Professor  James  represents  it  as  practised  by  these 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     15 


philosophical  worthies,  is  based  upon  the  recognition 
that  the  idea  of  a  thing  implies  qiuilities  in  the  thing, 
and  that  the  qmlities  of  a  thing  are  a  convenient  name 
given  to  our  prevision  of  how  that  thing  will,  under 
specified  circumstances,   act.    The   practical  difference 
referred  to  is  a  difference  in  the  mode  of  proceeding 
of  the  thing  discussed  ;    whether  or  not  there  ensues  a 
practical  difference  in  the  action  of  ourselves  or  other 
folk,  in  the  action  of  any  except  that  particular  discussed 
thing,  is  a  totally  separate  question.    The  "  Pragmatic 
Principle,"  as  exemplified  in  Professor  James's  account 
of  its  application  by  Locke,  Berkeley  and  Hume,  is, 
therefore,  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  formula  of 
scientific   thinking,  in    contradistinction  to  such  dis- 
cussion of  mere  meaningless  words  as  has  been  not 
unfairly  reproached  to  "  metaphysics."    Thus  under- 
stood, the  "  Pragmatic  Principle  "  of  Mr  Peirce,  the 
formula  of  "  cash- value  in  experience,"   would,  no 
doubt,  have  interested  the  philosophers  already  men- 
tioned, and  those  others,  particularly  the  Mills  and 
Bain,  whom  Professor  James  enumerates  as  having 
been  pragmatists  without  knowing  it.    It  would  have 
interested  also  that  most  suggestive  and  genial  man 
of    science,    the    writer    of    William    James's    great 
**  Psychology "    and   of    so    many   invaluable   obiter 
dicta  even  in  the  works  intended  to  convert  us  to  the 
"  Will-to-Believe."    But    when    it    comes    to    that 
particular   Professor   William   James   who   has   dis- 


1..V 


i6 


Vital  Lies 


tinguished  himself  by  the  invention  of  the  **  WiU-to- 
BeUeve,"  there  seems  no  reason  for  his  feeling  par- 
ticularly attracted,  but  rather  (as  we  shall  see  later 
on)  for  his  being  particularly  alienated,  by  the  "  Prag- 
matic Principle"  and  the  "Cash-value  in  terms  of 
experience  "  when  interpreted  in  the  above  manner. 
For  the  Pragmatic  Principle  and,  more  particularly, 
its  cash-value  formulation  are  open  also  to  another 
interpretation. 

"  Practical  difference  "  may  also  be  taken  as  mean- 
ing difference  in  the  actions  or  habits  of  human  beings, 
difference  such  as  concerns  practical  persons  in  contra- 
distinction to  thinkers  and  investigators— for  instance, 
educators  and  legislators,  bent  upon  directly  furthering 
prosperity  and  good  behaviour.  Or,  in  other  words, 
"  practical  difference  "  may  be  taken  in  the  sense  of 
implying  such  practice  as  is  no  longer  the  test  of  an 
opinion,  but  the  application  of  an  opinion  once  ac- 
cepted, whether  previously  tested  or  not.  The  two 
meanings  of  "  Practical  Difference  "  are  in  continual 
interconmiunication,  since  everybody  must  admit 
that  "  practical  difference  "  implying  safe  and  desirable 
decisions  about  conduct,  often  follows  upon  the  recog- 
nition of  such  "practical  difference"  between  ideas 
as  we  have  previously  spoken  of ;  nay,  that  though 
some  of  our  practical  differences  in  conduct  happen 
to  be  due  to  our  not  knowing  the  practical  differences 
between  what  is  and  what  is  not  true,  as  when  (so  Pro- 


> 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     17 

fessor  James  often  urges)  we  wager,  we  take  risks  in 
which  the  gain  is  great  and  the  loss  trifling ;  yet  the 
majority  of  our  practical  decisions  are  undoubtedly 
founded  upon  ourselves  or  some  one  else  having 
**  made  ideas  clear  "  and  tested  suppositions  by  actual 
or  supposed  experiment.  Indeed,  the  two  meanings  of 
"  practical  difference "  are  in  such  close  proximity 
that  the  thought  of  even  the  maker  dear  of  our  ideas, 
of  even  Mr  Peirce  himself,  has  occasionally  wavered 
between  the  two. 

Since,  in  that  very  article  "  How  to  Make  Our  Ideas 
Clear,"  we  come  upon  the  following  ambiguous  develop- 
ments of  that  ambiguous  expression  "  practical  "  : 

"  To  develop  its  meaning  we  have  .  .  .  simply  to 
determine  :  what  habits  it  produces  ;  for  what  a  thing 
means  is  simply  what  habits  it  involves  "  (page  292). 

"  What,  then,  is  belief  ?  ...  it  involves  the  estab- 
lishment in  our  nature  of  a  rule  of  action,  or,  say,  for 
short,  a  habit  "  (page  291). 

"  The  essence  of  belief  is  the  establishment  of  a  habit, 
and  different  beUefs  are  distinguished  by  the  different 
modes  of  action  to  which  they  give  rise  "  (page  291). 

"  There  is  no  distinction  of  meaning  so  fine  as 
to  consist  in  anything  but  a  possible  difference  of 
practice  "  (page  293). 

It  is  this  ambiguity  in  Mr  Peirce's  words,  if  not  in 
his  thought,  which  probably  commended  the  "  Prag- 
matic Principle  "  to  Professor  James. 


B 


i8 


Vital  Lies 


III 

It  is  the  object  of  the  following  pages,i  not  to  discuss 
the  intrinsic  merits  of  the  "Pragmatic  Principle," 
but  to  expose  the  "development  or  transmogrifica- 
tion "  of  the  Pragmatism  of  "  How  to  Make  Our  Ideas 
Clear"  into  the  Pragmatism  of  the  Will-to-BeUeve 
and  of  the  Making  of  Truth.     And,  while  doing  this, 

1  The  above  had  already  been  written  when  Mr  Peirce  published 
the  following  passage  in  an  article  in  the  Hibbert  Journal 
(October  1908) : 

"  In  1871,  in  a  Metaphysical  Club  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
I  used  to  preach  this  principle  as  a  sort  of  logical  gospel,  repre- 
senting the  unformulated  method  followed  by  Berkeley,  and  in 
conversation  about  it  I  called   it  '  Pragmatism.'      In  December 
1877  and  January  1878  I  set  forth  the  doctrine  in  the  Popidar 
Science  Monthly ;  and  the  two  parts  of  my  essay  were  printed  in 
French  in  the  Revue  Philosophique,  vols.  vi.  and  vii.     Of  course, 
the  doctrine  attracted  no  particular  attention,  for,  as  I  had  remarked 
in  my  opening  sentence,  very  few  people  care  for  logic.     But  in 
1897  Professor  James  remodelled  the  matter,  and  transmogrified 
it  into  a  doctrine  of  philosophy,  some  parts  of  which  I  highly 
approved,  while  other  and  more  prominent  parts  I  regarded,  and 
still  regard,  as  opposed  to  sound  logic.     About  the  time  Professor 
Papirie  [sic,  query  Papini,   V.  L.]  discovered,  to  the  delight  of  the 
Pragmatist  school,  that  this  doctrine  was  incapable  of  definition, 
which  would  certainly  seem  to  distinguish  it  from  every  other 
doctrine  in  whatever  branch  of  science,  I  was  coming  to  the  con- 
clusion that  my  poor  little  maxim  should  be  called  by  another 
name ;    and    accordingly,  in  April    1905,  I    renamed    it    '  Prag- 
maticism.*     I  had  never  before  dignified  it  by  any  name  in  print, 
except  that,  at  Professor  Baldwin's  request,  I  wrote  a  definition 
of  it  for  his  '  Dictionary  of  Psychology  and  Philosophy.'     I  did 
not  insert  the  word  in  the  '  Century  Dictionary,'  though  I  had 
charge  of  the  philosophical  definitions  of  that  work ;  for  I  have  a 
perhaps  exaggerated  dislike  of  riclame." 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     19 

we  shall  incidentally  afford  the  reader  an  example  of 
the  apphcation  of  the  Pragmatic  method  itself.  Like 
Locke  asking  the  meaning  of  "Human  Identity," 
hke  Berkeley  asking  the  meaning  of  "Matter," 
like  Hume  asking  the  meaning  of  "  Causation,"  we 
humble  people  will,  in  our  turn,  ask  the  meaning  of 
"Practical  Difference,"  and  test  it  by  examining 
whether  the  attitude  toward  opinion  and  truth  taken 
up  by  Mr  Peirce  is  the  same  attitude  as  that  taken 
up  toward  opinion  and  truih  by  Professor  James 
and  Mr  Schiller;  or  whether  the  difference  in  the 
resulting  attitude  does  not  prove  a  corresponding 
difference  between  the  "  Pragmatic  Principle  "  as  in- 
tended by  Mr  Peirce,  and  the  "  Pragmatic  Principle  " 
as  employed  by  Mr.  Peirce's  ostensible  disciples  : 

*'  Consider  what  effects,  which  might  conceivably 
have  practical  bearings,  we  conceive  the  object  of  our 
conception  to  have.  Then  our  conception  of  these 
effects  [itaUcs  mine]  is  the  whole  of  our  conception  of 
the  object^  "  A  figment  is  the  product  of  somebody's 
imagination ;  it  has  such  characters  as  his  thought 
impresses  upon  it  (A).  That  whose  characters  are 
independent  of  how  you  or  I  think  [itaUcs  mine]  is  an 
external  reahty."  (A)  "  Thus  we  may  define  the  real 
as  that  whose  characters  are  independent  of  what  any- 
body may  think  them  to  be.''  (B)  "  These  minds  do  not 
seem  to  beUeve  that  disputation  is  ever  to  cease  ;  they 
seem  to  think  that  the  opinion  which  is  natural  for  one 


20 


Vital  Lies 


if 


man  is  not  so  for  another,  and  that  belief  will  conse- 
quently never  be  settled.    In  contenting  themselves 
with  fixing  their  own  opinion  by  a  method  which  would 
lead  another  man  to  a  different  result,  (A)  they  betray 
their  feeble  hold  of  the  conception  of  what  trvth  is.    On 
ihe  other  hand,  all  the  followers  of  science  are  fuUy 
persuaded  that  the  processes  of  investigation,  if  only 
pushed  far  enough,  will  give  one  certain  solution  to  every 
question  to  which  they  can  be  appUed,  .  .  .  Different 
minds  may  set  out  with  the  most  antagonistic  views,  but 
the  progress  of  investigation  carries  them  hy  a  force 
outside  of  themselves  to  one  and  the  same  conclusion. 
(A)  This  activity  of  thought  hy  which  we  are  carried,  not 
where  we  wish,  but  to  a  fore-ordained  goal,  is  like  the 
operation  of  destiny.    No  modification  of  the  point  of 
view  taken,  no  selection  of  other  facts  for  study,  no 
natural  bent  of  mind,  can  enable  a  man  to  escape  the 
predestinate  opinion.    This  great  law  is  embodied  in 
the  conception  of  truth  and  reaUty. 

(A)  "  The  opinion  which  is  fated  to  be  ultimately 
agreed  to  hy  all  who  investigate  is  what  is  meant  hy  truth, 
and  the  object  represented  in  this  opinion  is  the  real. 
(A)  That  is  the  way  I  would  explain  reaUty."  "  But 
it  may  be  said  that  this  view  is  opposed  to  the  abstract 
definition  which  I  have  given  of  reahty,  inasmuch  as 
it  makes  the  character  of  the  real  to  depend  on  what 
is  ultimately  thought  about  them.  But  the  answer 
to  this  is  that,  on  the  other  hand,  reahty  is  independent, 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     2 1 

not  necessarily  of  thought  in  general,  but  only  of  what 
you  or  I  or  any  finite  number  of  men  may  think  about 
it ;  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  though  the  object  of 
the  final  opinion  depends  on  what  that  opinion  is,  yet 
(B)  what  that  opinion  is  does  not  depend  on  what  you 
or  I  or  any  man  thinks."    (C)  "  Our  perversity  and 
that  of  others  may  indefinitely  postpone  the  settlement 
of  opinion ;  it  might  even  conceivably  cause  an  arbitrary 
proposition  to  be  universally  accepted  as  long  as  the 
human  race  should  last.    Yet  even  that  would  not 
change  the  nature  of  the  behef  which  could  alone  be 
the  result  of  investigation  carried  suificiently  far ;  and 
if,  after  the  extinction  of  our  race,  another  should  arise 
with  faculties  and  dispositions  for  investigation,  that 
true  opinion  must  be  the  one  which  they  would  ulti- 
mately come  to.    Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise 
again,  and  the  opinion  which  would  -finally  result  from 
investigation   does   not   depend  on   how   anybody  may 
actually  think  "  [itaUcs  mine].     "  A  person  who  arbi- 
trarily chooses  the  proposition  he  will  adopt  can  use 
the  word  '  truth  '  only  to  emphasize  the  expression  of 
his  determination  to  hold  to  his  choice."  ^ 

These  quotations  from  "How  to  Make  Our  Ideas 
Clear  "  (to  which  might  be  added  others  from  the  essays 
constituting  the  first  and  third  instalments  of  the  series, 

*  C.  S.  Peirce,  "  Illustration  of  the  Logic  of  Science  :  II.  How  to 
Make  Our  Ideas  Clear"  {Popular  Science  MonOdy,  New  York, 
Appleton  &  Co.,  No.  Ixix.,  January  1878,  pp.  286  to  302). 


f  I 


22 


Vital  Lies 


"  Illustrations  of  the  Logic  of  Science  ")  display  Mr 
Peirce's  attitude  of  mind  regarding  the  relations  of 
"  truth  "  with  what  Professor  James  calls  our  "  wiUing 
nature  " — and  which  it  is  convenient  to  call  by  his 
essay  title,  "  Will-to-BeUeve."  The  following  quota- 
tions display  the  attitude  on  this  subject  of  the  two 
chief  philosophers  who  have  accepted  Mr  Peirce's 
principle  and  name  of  Pragmatism.  I  letter  both  sets 
of  quotations,  in  order  to  faciUtate  the  comparison 
between  them. 

Schiller  :  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  page  18  : 
(B)  "  Two  men,  therefore,  with  different  fortunes, 
histories  and  temperaments,  (mght  not  to  arrive  at  the 
same  metaphysic  .  .  .  each  should  react  individiuilly 
on  the  food  for  thought  which  his  personal  life  affords, 
and  the  resulting  differences  ought  not  to  be  set  aside 
as  void  of  ultimate  significance."  (ItaUcs  in  the 
original.) 

Schiller  :  "  Axioms  as  Postulates— Personal  Ideal- 
ism," page  59  : 

(A)  "What  we  have  seen  to  be  untrue,  viz.,  that 
there  is  an  objective  world  given  independently  of  us 
and  constraining  us  to  recognize  it." 

Schiller  :  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  page  189  : 
(A)  "  He  (the  Pragmatist)  thinks  that  the  coercive- 
ness  of  '  fact '  has  been  enormously  exaggerated  by 


aitiMfs'ssmMsau 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     23 

failure  to  observe  that  it  is  never  sheer  coercion  but 
always  mitigated  by  his  acceptance." 

Schiller  :  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  page  208  : 

(A)  (Pragmatic  truth)  "  is  fluid,  not  rigid,  temporal 
and  temporary,  not  eternal  and  everlasting ;  chosen, 
not  inevitable  ;  born  of  passion  and  sprung  (like  Aphro- 
dite) from  a  foaming  sea  of  desires,  not '  dispassionate  ' 
nor  *  purely  intellectual ' ;  incomplete,  not  perfect ; 
faUible,  not  inerrant ;  absorbed  in  the  attaining  of 
what  is  not  yet  achieved ;  purposive  and  strugghng 
towards  ends." 

Schiller  :  **  Axioms  as  Postulates — Personal  Ideal- 
ism," page  120 : 

(B)  "  What  are  these  mechanical  explanations 
which  have  so  successfully  occupied  the  fertile  field  of 
science  ?  They  are  devices  of  our  own  .  .  .  ideals 
conceived  by  our  intelligence  to  which  we  are  coaxing 
reahty  to  approximate.' 


jj 


Schiller  :  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  page  12  : 

(C)  "...  The  human  reason  is  ever  gloriously 
human  ...  it  mercifully  interposes  an  impenetrable 
veil  between  us  and  any  truth  or  reahty  which  is  wholly 
alien  to  our  nature.''* 

WiUiam  James  :    "  Pragmatism,"  page  273  : 

(B)  "  On  pragmatic  principles  we  cannot  reject  any 


"■ii!»PjlgJ-""J!i;!!lLa 


Nt 


¥  I 


r 


24 


Vital  Lies 


hypothesis  if  consequences  useful  to  hfe  flow  from  it. 
Universal  conceptions  .  .  .  have  indeed  no  meaning 
and  no  reality  if  they  have  no  use.  But  if  they  have 
any  use,  they  have  that  amount  of  meaning,  and  the 
meaning  will  be  true  if  the  use  squares  well  with  Ufe's 
other  uses." 

WiUiam  James  :  "  Pragmatism,"  page  76  : 
(B)  "  But  in  this  world  .  .  .  certain  ideas  are  not 
only  agreeable  to  think  about,  or  agreeable  as  support- 
ing other  ideas  that  we  are  fond  of,  but  they  are  also 
helpful  in  hfe's  practical  struggles.  If  there  be  any 
hfe  that  it  is  really  better  we  should  lead,  and  if  there 
be  any  idea  which,  beheved  in,  would  help  us  to  lead 
that  hfe,  then  it  would  be  really  heUer  for  us  [itahcs  sic] 
to  believe  in  that  idea,  unless,  indeed,  belief  in  it  inci- 
dentally clashed  with  other,  greater  vital  benefits.  (Itahcs 
9ic.) 

(B)  "What  would  be  better  for  us  to  beheve ! 
This  sounds  very  like  a  definition  of  truth.  [Itahcs  mine.  ] 
It  comes  very  near  to  saying  what  we  ought  [itahcs  sic] 
to  beheve !  And  in  that  definition  none  of  you  would 
find  any  oddity.  Ought  we  ever  not  to  beheve  what 
it  is  better  for  us  to  beheve  ?  And  can  we  then  keep 
the  notion  of  what  is  better  for  us  and  what  is  true  for  us 
[itahcs  mine]  permanently  apart  ?  Pragmatism  says 
no,  and  I  fully  agree  with  her  !  " 

Wilham  James  :  "  Pragmatism,"  page  204  : 


J    ! 


^? 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     25 

(A)  '*  You  can  say  of  it  either  that :  it  is  useful 
because  it  is  true  ;  or  that  it  is  true  because  it  is  useful. 
True  is  the  name  for  whatever  starts  the  verification 
process  ;  ^  useful  is  the  name  for  its  completed  function 
in  experience." 

Wilham  James  :  "  Pragmatism,"  page  73  : 

(B)  "  If  theological  ideas  prove  to  have  a  value  for 
concrete  hfe,  they  will  be  true,  for  Pragmatism,  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  good  for  so  much." 

Wilham  James  :  "  Pragmatism,"  page  299  : 

(A)  "  On  pragmatic  principles,  if  the  hypothesis  of 
God  works  satisfactorily  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word, 
it  is  true." 

(B)  "  Now,  whatever  its  residual  difficulties  may 
be,  experience  shows  that  it  certainly  does  work  and 
that  the  problem  is  ...  to  determine  it  so  that  it  will 
combine  with  all  the  other  working  truths." 

Wilham  James  :  "  Pragmatism,"  page  200 : 

(B)  "  Pragmatism  asks  its  usual  question  :  Grant 
an  idea  or  a  behef  to  be  true,  it  says,  what  concrete 

^C.  S.  Peirce,  "How  to  Make  Our  Ideas  Qear,"  page  289: 
"...  the  action  of  thought  is  excited  by  the  irritation  of  doubt 
and  ceases  when  belief  is  attained ;  so  that  production  of  belief 
is  the  sole  function  of  thought."  This  shows  that  for  Peirce  dovbt 
"  is  the  name  of  what  starts  the  verification  process  " — truth  what 
ends  that  process  when  it  has  been  properiy  carried  through. 
Note  Professor  James's  Implying  that  we  know  truih  before  em- 
barking on  the  process  of  ascertaining  it ! 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     27 


ij 


ii 


U 


difference  wiU  its  being  true  make  in  any  one's  actual 
life  ?  " 

Schiller  :  "  Humanism,"  page  260  et  seq.  : 
(B)  "  In  the  end  the  world  is  human  experience, 
and  a  world  which  we  neither  did  or  could  experience 
would  not  be  one  we  need  argue  or  trouble  about, 

"  What  would  be  our  attitude  towards  the  world  in 
which  the  ultimate  significance  of  our  ideals  was  denied 
...  and  in  which  the  hope  of  happiness  was  nothing 
but  a  delusion  ?  " 

SchiUer  :  "  Humanism,"  page  199  et  seq.  : 

(B)  "  Knowledge  is  power,  because  we  decUne  to 

recognize  as  knowledge  whatever  does  not  satisfy  our 

lust  for  power." 

"  It  foUows  that  ultimate  reahty  must  be  absolutely 
satisfactory." 

(A)  "  There  is  a  serious  faUacy  in  the  notion  that 
the  pursuit  of  truth  could  reveal  a  chamber  of  horrors 

in  the  innermost  shrine (B)  If  this  were  true 

we  should  decKne  to  beheve  it  and  to  accept  it  as  true. 
And  even  if  we  could  be  forced  to  the  admission  that 
the  pursuit  of  truth  necessarily  and  inevitably  brought 
us  face  to  face  with  some  unbearable  atrocity 
[C]  as  soon  as  the  pursuit  of  truth  was  generally  recog- 
nized  to  be  practicaUy  noxious,  we  should  simply  give 

(C)J*If  its  misguided  votaries  persisted  in    their 


M 


diabolical  pursuit  of  truth  regardless  of  the  conse- 
quences, they  would  be  stamped  out  as  the  Indian 
Government  has  stamped  out  the  Thugs.  .  .  .  The 
thing  has  happened  over  and  over  again.  All  through 
the  Middle  Ages  most  branches  of  knowledge  were 
under  black  suspicion  as  hostile  to  human  welfare. 
They  languished  accordingly." 

Schiller  :  "  Axioms  as  Postulates— Personal  Ideal- 
ism," page  122  : 

(B)  "  There  is  no  intelligibility  without  conformity 
to  human  nature,  and  human  nature  is  teleological. 
...  A  world  which  can  be  *  fully  explained,'  but  only 
in  mechanical  or  barely  intellectual  terms,  is  not  fully 
intelligible,  is  not  fully  explained. 

"  An  intelligent  reader  may  perhaps  gather  .  .  . 
why  the  personality  of  God  should  be  esteemed  an 
indispensable  postulate.  Is  immortaUty  a  postulate  ? 
At  present  we  are  too  profoundly  ignorant  as  to  what 
men  actually  desire  in  the  matter,  and  why  and  how 
to  decide  what  they  ought  to  desire." 

WiUiam  James :  "  Pragmatism,"  concluding  sen- 
tence : 

(B)  "  Between  the  two  extremes,  of  crude  natural- 
ism on  the  one  hand  and  transcendental  absolutism 
on  the  other,  you  may  find  that  what  I  take  the  liberty 
of  calling  the  pragmatistic  or  melioristic  type  of  theism, 
is  exactly  what  you  require." 


28 


Vital  Lies 


I 


1 1 


IV 


Such,  then,  is  the  attitude  towards  Truth  and  the 
WiU-to-BeUeve  of  Mr  C.  S.  Peirce,  and  such  the  atti- 
tude of  Messrs  James  and  SchiUer.    Applying  in  this 
case  that  selfsame  method   for    "  making  our  ideas 
clear  »  which  bids  us  test  the  meaning  of  an  idea  by 
the  results  of  that  possible  meaning,  we  see  that  the 
Pragmatic  Principle  involved  by  Messrs  James  and 
Schiller   must   differ   from   the   Pragmatic   Principle 
formulated  by  Mr  Peirce,  inasmuch  as  the  consequences 
not  only  deducible  but  actuaUy  deduced  from  the  one 
are  in  flagrant  contradiction  with  the  consequences 
deduced  from  the  other.    The  contradiction  amounts 
to    this,  that  while  Mr   Peirce  makes  trvth  into  an 
inteUectual  imperative  which  sooner  or  later  imposes 
Itself  (or  would  impose  itself  but  for  human  "  per- 
versity »)    on   (ypiwUm,    Messrs   James   and   Schiller 
(besides  constantly  confusing  "  Truth  "  with  its  ob- 
jective  correlate    -  Reahty »)    calmly   identify  trvlh 
with  belief,  and  belief  with  (xpinion,  and  they  test  truth 
(which  is  itself  beUef's  and  opinion's  standard)  by  the 
beneficial  or  agreeable,  the  useful  consequences  due  to 
holding  a  given  behef  or  opinion.    The  contradiction 
between  the  two  attitudes  toward  truth  can  be  practi- 
caMy  tested  by  substituting  the  word  "  opinion  »  for 
the  word  "  truth  "  in  the  quotations  severally  from 


i> 


i., 


*i     ft 


5i 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     29 


Mr  Peirce  and  from  his  self-styled  disciples.    In  the 
quotations  from  Mr  Peirce,  this  substitution  results 
in  nonsense :  no  one  could  mean  that  "  opinion  "  [in 
original   "truth"]    "is   that   whose   characters   are 
independent  of  what  anybody  may  think  them  to  be," 
nor  that  "  opinion  "  ["  truth  "]  "  is  the  fore-ordained 
conclusion   of   scientific  investigation  if   pushed   far 
enough  "  ;    nor  that  "  opinion  "  ["  truth  "]  "  is  pro- 
duced by  a  force  outside  of  ourselves  and  similar  to 
destiny";     still    less    that    "opinion"    ["truth"] 
"  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again  independent  of  what 
any  one  thinks,"  even  if  it  have  to  await  the  coming 
of  another  race  of  human  beings ;  least  of  all,  that 
we  may  expect  unanimity  of  "  opinion  "  ["  truth  "] 
from  individuals  starting  with  different  bias,  character, 
and  methods.    It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that,  when 
Mr  Peirce  speaks  of  truth,  he  does  not  mean  the  same 
thing  as  opinixm. 

But  if  we  perform  this  little  experiment  upon  the 
quotations  from  Messrs  James  and  Schiller,  we  shall 
find  ourselves  in  front  of  a  totally  different  "  practical 

result." 

So  far  from  turning  the  sentences  into  nonsense,  the 
substitution  of  "opinion"  for  "truth"  will  make 
them  not  only  clear  and  reasonable,  but  frequently 
truistic  and  platitudinous :  two  individuals  may,  in- 
deed, be  expected  to  arrive  at  opinions  as  different  as 
their  lives  and  fortunes.    Acceptance  of  an  opinion  is 


r 


30 


Vital  Lies 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     3 1 


% 


\ 


certainly  different  from  coercion  by  fact.  Opinion 
may,  indeed,  be  "  chosen,not  inevitable  "  ;  "  temporary, 
not  eternal  "  ;  "  fluid,  not  rigid  "  ;  "  passionate, 
not  unbiassed  "  ;  nor  could  anything  be  more  appro- 
priate than  Mr  Schiller's  simile  of  opinion  rising,  hke 
Aphrodite,  "  out  of  a  foaming  sea  of  desire."  We  can 
all  think  of  cases  when  human  reason's  "glorious 
humanness  "  has  interposed  a  veil,  merciful  or  other- 
wise, between  mankind  and  opinions  "  aHen  to  its 
nature  "  ;  and  history  does  show  (as  Mr  Peirce  remarks 
in  the  first  of  his  articles  on  the  "  Logic  of  Science  ") 
no  end  of  violent  repressions  of  opinions  which  were 
deemed  dangerous  or  odious.  Professor  James  would 
be  not  less  logical,  but  a  deal  more  so,  if  he  said  that 
it  is  opinion  which  "  starts  the  verification-process  "  ; 
more  logical,  because  that  verification-process  results 
in  a  tryth  which  sometimes  dispels  an  opinion.  People 
much  less  subtle  than  IVIr  Schiller  have  talked  of 
"making  up  their  minds,"  or  "making  themselves 
an  opinion  "  ;  and  no  one,  subtle  or  not,  would  deny 
that  many  opinions  are  purposive.  And,  finally,  this 
very  fluid,  temporal,  temporary,  individual,  biassed, 
passionate,  human-made  (even  officially  made)  thing 
opinion,  can  be  arranged,  tested,  accepted,  welcomed, 
scouted,  anathematized,  on  the  score  of  being  or  not 
being  useful,  beneficent,  conducive  to  fife.  For  in- 
stance, basing  ourselves  on  Lafcadio  Heam,  we  might 
quite  admit  that  the   opinions    summed    up    under 


' 


\ 


the  title  "  Ancestor- Worship  "  had  been  (to  quote 
Professor  James's  rather  commercial  phrase  of  recom- 
mendation) "  exactly  what  was  required "  by  the 
former  inhabitants  of  Japan  ;  but  few  of  us  would  be 
ready  to  describe  those  "  Ancestor-worship  "  opinions 
as  "  independent  of  what  any  one  thought,"  and  "  fore- 
ordained to  be  ultimately  arrived  at  by  investigators 
despite  all  individual  and  temporary  bias,"  as  Mr 
Peirce  describes  trtUh.  For,  so  far  from  opinion  being 
identifiable  with  truth,  it  frequently  happens  that  an 
opinion  may  be  extremely  efficacious,  practically  and 
morally,  and  yet  on  the  contrary,  false. 


Now,  it  is  exactly  because  opinim,  while  possessing 
all  the  characteristics  attributed  by  Messrs  James  and 
Schiller  to  truth,  by  no  means  always  answers  to  Mr 
Peirce's  definition  of  truth,  that  we  must  set  our  face 
against  the  identification,  even  against  the  partial 
confusion  of  opinion  with  truth  :  the  two  words  must 
be  kept  separate  because  they  answer  to  separate,  to 
occasionally  overiapping  but  by  no  means  equivalent, 
notions.  And  the  tendencies  leading  to  this  identi- 
fication of  truth  and  opinion,  leading  to  this  testing 
truth  by  practical,  moral,  extrinsic  value,  are  tendencies 
requiring  to  be  checked,  not  because  they  exist  in  dis- 


32 


Vital  Lies 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     33 


'M' 


tinguished  thinkers  like  Messrs  James  and  Schiller, 
but  because  they  exist  in  all  of  us,  and  are  such  that 
all  philosophy  is  not  too  much  to  keep  them  in  order. 

The  "  WiU-to-BeKeve,"  the  "  Consent  of  our  WiUing 
Nature,"  the  "  Purposive  Making  of  Truth  "  are  labels 
for  human  instincts  as  universal  as  the  instincts  bidding 
us  seek  pleasure,  repose,  and  advantage  wherever  they 
can  be  got,  and  without  consideration  for  the  pleasure, 
the  repose,  the  advantage  of  other  beings.  Most  of 
our  thoughts,  and  probably  the  whole  of  our  faculty 
for  thinking,  have  arisen  at  the  bidding  of  an  interested 
purpose,  of  a  self-seeking  will ;  and  this  accounts  for 
many  of  the  absurdities  that  have  been  thought,  and 
perhaps  for  most  of  the  vices  of  our  methods  of  think- 
ing. But,  thanks  to  the  pressure  of  universal  and 
averaged  purposes  and  interests  upon  individuals, 
thanks  to  the  conflict  of  opinions,  of  purposively  made 
trvihs  and  of  beliefs  which  are  willed,  there  has  been 
evolved  in  our  thinking  nature  an  automatic  check,  a 
counteracting  force,  to  those  interested  motives  and 
emotional  preferences  without  which  there  would 
have  been  no  thinking  faculty  at  all.  That  check  is 
the  particular  conception  defined  by  Mr  Peirce  as 
truth.  That  counteracting  force  is  constituted  by  the 
taste,  the  passion,  the  instinctive  and  imperious  re- 
spect for  truth,  which  plays  in  our  intellectual  hfe  the 
part  played  in  our  individual  and  social  hfe  bv  the 
instincts  of  justice  and  chastity.    In  the  same  way 


I 


that  our  hfe  as  human  beings  would  be  laid  waste  with- 
out these  other  two  great  altruistic  instincts,  so  also, 
were  it  not  for  the  passion  for  truth,  our  intellectual  hfe 
would  have  been  perpetually  jeopardized  by  the  natural 
tendency    to   beheve    (or  pretend  to  beUeve)  what- 
soever appeals  to  individual  or  momentary  interests 
and  preferences.    Mankind  has  always  wanted,  perhaps 
always  required,  and  certainly  always  made  itself,  a 
stock  of  delusions  and  sophisms,  of  vital  lies  or  of  white 
lies.    Every  human  being's  thought,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, tends  to  accommodate  itself  to  some  wish, 
some  use,  some  habit.    Every  opinion  tends  to  identify 
itself  with  truth.    The  Will-to-Beheve,  the  Purposive 
Making  of  Truth,  are  unceasingly  at  work.    This  is  the 
reason  why  we  have  no  use  for  the  kind  of  Pragmatism 
which  teaches  the  testing  of  truth  by  its  utihty,  the 
identification  of  truth  with  opinion,  which  preaches 
this  universal  and  ineradicable  vice  of  all  our  thinking 
as  a  self-righteous,  a  self-assertive  virtue. 


VI 

At  this  point  of  my  proceedings  against  what  has 
usurped  the  name  of  Pragmatism,  but  what  I  would 
rather  describe  as  the  pragmatistic  temperament  in 
philosophy,  it  is  quite  natural  that  the  reader  should 
interrupt  with  the  perhaps  indignant  suggestion  that 


ii 


34 


Vital  Lies 


I  must  be  grossly  misunderstanding,  if  not  misrepre- 
senting, my  adversaries. 

If,  as  I  hope,  he  has  himself  read  some  of  the  books 
under  accusation,  he  will  point  out  with  perfect  justice 
that  quite  one  half  of  their  contents  is  in  absolute 
contradiction  with  my  summing  up,  and  in  absolute 
agreement  with  Mr  Peirce's  and  everyone  else's  defini- 
tion of  truth.  And  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  reader  pos- 
sesses no  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  incriminated 
writings,  he  will  be  even  less  able  to  believe  my  asser- 
tion that  the  philosophers  calling  themselves  Pragma- 
tists  should  persistently  and  consistently  deduce  from 
Mr  Peirce's  principle  a  doctrine  so  flagrantly  in  opposi- 
tion to  his  own,  and  should  claim  as  their  remoter 
intellectual  progenitors  (Pragamatists,  we  are  told, 
before  Pragmatism)  philosophers  so  extraordinarily 
imlike  themselves  as  Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  and  Mill. 

Now  this  fact,  which  seems  incredible  to  the  reader, 
is  the  hicy  the  gravamen  of  the  whole  question  of 
Pragmatism,  and  the  chief  reason  for  suspecting  and 
discountenancing  the  self-styled  pragmatistic  attitude, 
and,  I  might  add,  complexion  of  mind.  The  bad 
business  about  Messrs  James's  and  Schiller's  contra- 
dictory additions  to  the  Pragmatism  of  Mr  Peirce,  is 
precisely  that  the  principles  thus  inserted  by  them 
into  the  original  formula  of  Pragmatism  are  neither 
consistently  applied  nor  persistently  maintained,  but 
flicker  in  and  out  of  existence  with  perfect  intermittence 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     3  5 

and  inconsistency.    That  Truth   which  is  fltiid  not 
rigidy  temporary  and  individual,  that  truth  which  is 
whit  it  would  he  good  to  heUeve,  that  truth  which  has 
been  got  by  an  act  of  vohtion  and  choice,  occasionallv 
by  a  wager,  that  goddess  of  Mr  Schiller's,  risen  not  out 
of  the  old-fashioned  well,  hut,  like  Aphrodite,  out  of  a 
foaming  sea  of  desires,  thal^  brand  new  and  at  the  same 
time    comfortingly  old-fashioned    sort  of    truth   ("  a 
new    name    for   some   old   ways  of    thinking  "),i    is 
never  invoked  in  connection  with  any  notion  of  which 
we  are  already  certain,  nor  applied  to  any  problem 
upon  which  certainty  seems  proximately  forthcoming. 
The  will  to  beUeve,  even  the  right  to  believe,  is 
indeed  invoked  in  the  obscure  problems  of  the  relation 
between  body  and  soul ;  ^  but  we  are  not  referred  to  it 
for  solutions  of  the  problems  of  chemistry  or  physics. 
Still  less  are  we  recommended  to  apply  to  the  disputes 
of    Lamarckians    and    neo-Darwinians    that    test    of 
suitability   to   public   morals   or   private   consolation 
which  we  are  earnestly  pressed  to  bring  to  bear  upon 
the  tenets  of  optimistic  theism  and  the  hypotheses  of 
mediumistic  spiritualism.     We   are   recommended   to 
beUeve  as  we  choose  only  in  the  cases  where  rational 
beUef  cannot  yet  exist,  and  cheered  onwards  to  make 
up  our  mind  only  where  our  judgment  is  necessarily 


*  "  A  new  name  for  some  old  ways  of  thinking.' 
Professor  James's  volume  "  Pragmatism." 

•  W.  James,  "  Human  Immortality,"  p.  39^e<  seq. 


Subtitle  of 


36 


Vital  Lies 


suspended.  Wherever  it  is  controlled  by  observation, 
experiment,  calculation,  or  any  of  the  ordinary  methods 
for  attaining  truth.  Pragmatism  drops  into  what 
Mr  Schiller  describes  as  its  original  humility,^  it 
shrinks  into  being  once  more  Mr  Peirce's  method 
"  for  making  our  ideas  clear  '* — it  curtseys  a  welcome 
to  unanswerable  facts,  to  indisputable  generalizations, 
and  recites  the  "  humble  "  formula  in  which,  as  we 
are  told.  Professor  Peirce  summed  up  the  practice  of 
British  philosophers  from  Locke  to  Mill  and  Bain. 
But  on  one  or  two  points  where  science  decUnes  or 
delays  to  answer ;  in  fact,  where  truth  in  Mr  Peirce's 
sense  does  not  close  the  door  in  the  Pragmatist's  face, 
then  Pragmatism  reveals  herself  the  real  "  Aphrodite 
born  of  the  foaming  sea  of  desires,"  and  goddess-Uke 
creates  truths  which  are  conformable  to  the  "  ideals," 
the  "  hope  of  happiness,"  the  *'  what  it  would  be  better 
to  beheve,"  the  "  vital  hope  of  mankind,"  the  "  what 
is  exactly  what  you  require  "  of  her  high  priests  James 
and  Schiller.  Incessu  patet  dea.  To  the  sceptic,  the 
scoffer,  to  the  reader  in  hopeless  confusion  of  mind. 
Pragmatism  is  at  last  revealed  in  aU  her  miraculous 
and  beneficent  glory. 

1  Schiller,  "  Pragmatism  and  Pseudo- Pragmatism,"  in  Mind, 
p.  390:  "...  if  pragmatist  epistemology  is  more  revolutionary, 
it  is  also  more  systematic  and  adequate  tlian  its  humble  beginnings 
in  Dr  Peirce's  magazine  article  appeared  to  portend. 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     37 


VII 


I  began  this  paper  by  stating  that  my  chief  reason 
for  faUing  foul  of  Will-to-BeUeve  Pragmatism  is  because 
it  exemphfies  an  intellectual  temperament  which,  even 
while  examining  into  the  nature  and  uses  of  Truth, 
indulges  in  continual  ambiguities,  revokes  of  state- 
ments, quibbles  and  distortions  of  meaning,  in  such 
tentative  disingenuousness  as  is  not  easily  detected  by 
others  and  perhaps  not  easily  suspected  by  oneself. 
Of  such  dupUcity  there  luckily  presented  itself  to  my 
hand  an  initial  example  whose  detection,  hke  that  of 
some  medium's  sleight  of  hand,  was  calculated  to  arouse 
in  my  reader's  mind  a  justified  state  of  distrust.  That 
initial  disingenuousness  which  I  have  already  dealt  with 
is  the  adoption  of  the  name  and  employment  of  the  intel- 
lectual credit  of  a  logical  method — Mr  Peirce's  method 
for  "  making  our  ideas  clear  " — which,  as  I  have  shown 
by  a  comparison  between  the  conclusions  of  Mr  Peirce 
and  those  of  his  self-styled  disciples,  is  utterly  incom- 
patible with  the  pretensions  of  a  "  Will-to-Beheve  "  or 
the  "  purposive  "  "  Making  of  Truth." 

This  chapter  being  insufficient  for  the  intricate  pro- 
cesses of  showing  up  any  other  of  these  philosophical 
conjurors'  feats  of  logical  skill,  I  shall  devote  its  remain- 
ing pages  to  mere  further  arousing  of  the  reader's 
suspiciousness,  first  by  the  exhibition  of  some  of  these 


38 


Vital  Lies 


Pragmatists'  choicest  self-advertisements  and  **  testi- 
monials " ;  and  then  by  the  discovery  of  the  cat  which 
lurks  at  the  bottom  of  these  Pragmatists'  very  hetero- 
genous bag-full. 

Of  the  testimonial  to  Will-to-Beheve  Pragmatism 
extracted  by  the  initial  parade  of  Mr  Peirce's  "  Prin- 
ciple "  and  the  subsequent  hiding  of  Mr  Peirce's  con- 
clusions, we  have  re-valued  the  value  by  apphcation 
of  the  Peirce  method  to  quotations  from  Messrs  James 
and  Schiller  compared  with  quotations  from  Mr  Peirce 
himself.  The  already  quoted  account  of  Pragmatism 
in  Professor  James's  "  Varieties  of  ReUgious  Experi- 
ence "  (p.  443)  contains  another  "  testimonial "  in 
favour  of  the  doctrine.  The  reader  will  remember  that 
the  Pragmatistic  method  is  here  described  as  being 
impUcit  in  the  philosophy  of  the  chief  British  philo- 
sophers and  illustrated  by  the  proceedings  of  Locke, 
of  Berkeley  and  of  Hume ;  while  Brown,  Dugald 
Stewart,  the  Mills  and  James  Bain  are  further  adduced 
more  briefly  as  having  practised  the  method  later  to  be 
called  "  Pragmatic "  by  Mr  Peirce.  But  Professor 
James  does  not  add  that  these  philosophical  worthies, 
three  of  whom  at  least,  Hume,  Mill  and  Bain,  were 
rationahfatic  stalwarts,  employed  the  pragmatic  method 
merely  in  the  Peircean  sense  of  defining  and  verifying 
ideas  by  reference  to  possible  experience ;  and  that, 
even  like  Mr  Peirce  himself,  they  never  employed  it  in 
the  James-Schiller  sense  of  "  Willing  to  Beheve  "  or 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     39 


"Making  Truth"  in  obedience  to  life's  needs  and 
ideals.    And  by  this  display  of  one  half  of  the  facts 
and  omission  of  the  other  half  of  them.  Professor  James 
produces  on  the  reader's  mind  the  impression  that  the 
doctrine  of  Right-to-BeHeve,  or  Will-to-BeUeve,  which 
he  has  foisted  upon  Mr  Peirce's  Pragmatism,  is  not 
only  identical  with  it,  but  has  been  acted  upon,  long 
before  it  was  ever  given  a  name  or  formula,  by  the  very 
philosophers  who  notoriously  did  most  against  those 
practically  useful  theological  and  mystical  assumptions 
which  they  denounced  as  preferred,  desired,  "  chosen," 
in  fact,  as  "  willed  "  beUefs.    The  lay  pubhc,  the  public 
hungry  for  "  religious  experiences  "  like  those  to  whose 
advantages  Professor  James  has   devoted   so   many 
pages,  are  therefore  comfortably  able  to  say :  '*  You 
know  the  Will-to-Believe  was  the  philosophic  method 
not   only   of   that   great   Mr   Peirce   who    invented 
Pragmatism,  but  also  of  Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  the 
Mills,  Professor  Bain  and  all  the  people  who  we  thought 
were  sceptics  and  rationalists,  it  is  the  characteristimlly 
British  Philosophy.'^ 

After  identifying  his  views  as  characteristically 
British  (not  made  in  Germany,  he  is  careful  to  point  out, 
although  as  historical  fact  Kant,  with  his  "  Practical 
Reason,"  did  encourage  the  Will-to-Believe)  Professor 
James  renders  them  further  attractive  to  an  American 
or  English  audience  by  comparison  with  Protestantism. 
Pragmatism,  he  tells  us,  impHes  an  alteration  in  the 


40 


Vital  Lies 


"  seat  of  authority  "  ;  he  and  his  WiU-to-Bdieveists  are 
like  the  Reformers;  their  "  ultra-rationalist  "  opponents 
are  the  Papists.  Thus  Reason  is  made  to  play  the  part 
of  mediaeval  ecclesiastical  dogmatism,  and  the  Will-to- 
BeUeve  falls  into  the  gallant  attitude  of  sixteenth- 
century  free  thought ;  ^  and  (by  a  mere  juxtaposition  of 
things  and  quahties  not  necessarily  connected)  the 
impression  is  left  in  the  reader  that  Will-to-Believe 
Pragmatism  being  a  philosophical  heresy,  the  orthodox 
philosophy  of  rationalism  must  on  the  contrary  be 
dogmatic,  unscientific,  illiberal  and  stick  in  the  mud, 
while  Will-to-Behevism  is  not  only  scientific  and  pro- 
gressive, but  also,  like  the  Protestantism  which  went  to 
the  rack  and  the  stake,  eminently  scrupulous  and 
courageous. 

And  since  we  are  upon  the  subject  of  fine  gallant 
attitudes,  let  me  point  out  the  self-advertisement  which 
treats  belief  due  to  ivilUng  as  a  risk  which  the  believer 
<i88umes,  then  turn  the  risk  run  (or  rather  as  we  shall 
see,  not  run,  for  the  odds  are  supposed  favourable) 
into  an  adventure,  and  the  adventure  into  something 
bold  and  dashing  with  which  to  shame  poor  rationalists 
who  won't  join  in  it.     While  in  reahty  there  is  no 

*  "  It  will  be  an  alteration  in  the  seat  of  authority  that  reminds 
one  almost  of  the  protestant  reformation.  And  as,  to  papal  minds. 
Protestantism  has  often  seemed  a  mere  mess  of  anarchy  and  con- 
fusion, such,  no  doubt,  will  Pragmatism  often  seem  to  ultra- 
rationalist  minds  in  philosophy.  ...  I  venture  to  think  that 
philosophic  Protestantism  will  compass  a  not  dissimilar  prosperity," 
"  Pragmatism,"  p.  123. 


The  Two  Pragmatisms     41 

avda<yUy  (Mr  Schiller's  favourite  virtue),  nothing 
adventurous  (Professor  James's  pet  quality)  in 
wagering,  hke  Pascal^  against  the  beUef  which,  if 
true,  means  only  annihilation,  but  if  false,  eternal 
torment ;  and  for  the  belief  which,  if  false,  meant 
only  the  same  annihilation,  but  if  true,  a  possible 
eternity  of  happiness.  Pascal,  at  least,  declared 
roundly  that  such  a  choice  was  a  matter  of 
prudence ;  but  Messrs  Schiller  and  James  cheer  it  on 
as  something  strenuous  and  adventurous  and  thus 
advertise  their  doctrines  as  possessing,  besides  other 
agreeable  quahties,  the  further  attraction  of  a  spice 
of  heroism. 


VIII 

The  Pragmatists'  advertisement  of  panaceas  and 
show  of  "  testimonials  "  by  no  means  stops  here.  The 
volume  of  essays  entitled  *'  The  Will-to-BeUeve " 
is  dedicated  to  Charles  S.  Peirce  in  terms  which  imply 
that  the  inventor  of  Pragmatism  acquiesced  in  those 
very  methods  of  *'  fixing  behef  "  by  "  what  one  chooses 
to  think  "  against  which  he  had,  as  we  have  seen, 

*  Professor  James's  treatment  of  Pascal's  "  Wager  "  is  character- 
istic. For  after  quoting  it  ("  Will-to-Believe,"  p.  5)  as  an  example 
(with  its  mass  hearings  and  "  cela  vous  abetira  ")  of  what  he  does 
not  recommend,  he  proceeds  on  pp.  26-28  of  the  same  book  to 
encourage  us  to  adopt  our  belief  for  exactly  analogous  prudential 
considerations. 


dMi 


42 


Vital  Lie? 


especially   directed   his   attacks.     And   simi^rly   the 
volume  "  Pragmatism  "  is  dedicated  to'  the  memory 
of  John  Stuart  Mill,  a  philosopher  whom  Professor 
James    had    previously    treated  ^    with    conspicuous 
grudgingness,  and  even  made  responsible  ("Will-to- 
Ifeheve,"  pp.  128  and  228)  in  company  with  Bain  and 
Spencer,    for   the   dry   and   ungenerous   philosophical 
temper  of  his  day,  responsible  also,  this  time  in  com- 
pany with  Bentham,  Cobden  and  Bright,  for  what 
Professor  James  sneers  at  as  England's  "  drifting  raft  " 
pohcy.     One  wonders  why  Professor  James's  "  fancy  " 
should  "  hke  to  picture  Stuart  Mill  as  our  leader  if 
he  were  ahve  to-day,"  until  one  recollects  that  the 
theological  apologists  of^more  picturesque  centuries 
loved  to  quote  Hebrew  and  Pagan  worthies,  and  if 
possible  the  demons  and  false  prophets  themselves,  in 
support  of  articles  of  faith— Tes^e  David  mm  Sibylla, 
as  the  hymn  says  about  the  Last  Judgment.     One  is 
even  more  reminded  of    the  heaven-inspired  artifices 
of  pious  exorcists,  when  one  finds  a  Will-to-Beheve 
argument  backed  by  a  still  more  obdurate  rationahstic 
demon  :    by  W.  K.  CUfford,  even  in  that  very  essay 
against  teaching  unproved  dogmas  to  which  a  large  por- 
tion of  Professor  James's  Will-to-Bdieve  is  an  avowed 
counterblast.     *' I  can,  of  course,"   writes  Professor 

»  "  To  the  memory  of  John  Stiiart  Mill,  from  whom  I  first  learned 
the  pragmatic  openness  of  mind,  and  whom  my  fancy  likes  to 
picture  as  our  leader,  were  he  alive  to-day." 


.1 


I 


The  Two  Pragmatisms    43 

James  (*^  Varieties  of  Kehgious  Experience,"  p.  518-19) 
"  put  myself  in  the  sectarian  scientific  attitude,  and 
imagine  vividly  that  the  world  of  sensations  and  of 
scientific  law  and  objects  may  be  all ;  but  whenever 
I  do  this,  I  hear  that  inward  monitor,  of  whom  W.  K. 
Clifford  once  wrote,  whispering  the  word  '  Bosh.' " 
What  W.  K.  Clifford's  monitor  whispered  "  fiddle- 
sticks "  about  was  in  reahty  the  hypothesis  of  a  catas- 
trophic origin  of  organic  matter,  and  that,  as  remarked, 
in  a  paper  ("Essays,"  ii,  p.  335)  directed  against 
the  teaching  of  those  very  dogmas  which  Professor 
James  commends  as  true  in  the  sense  of  desirable.  But 
the  incorporation,  without  a  syllable  to  this  effect,  of 
CHfford's  phrase  into  an  argument  against  agnosticism 
associates  the  famous  arch-agnostic's  name  with  Will- 
to-Believe  apologetics :  "  Even  Clifford,  you  know, 
said  that  something  inside  him  whispered  bosh  to  the 
materialistic  hypothesis  "  must  be  the  average  reader's 
impression ;  an  impression  which  a  master  of  psy- 
chology, a  remarkably  acute  morahst,  and  a  first-class 
craftsman  of  words  should  surely  have  foreseen  and 
prevented. 


IX 

But  even  if  there  were  no  testimonials  from  adver- 
saries, Pragmatism  would  never  lack  for  advertisement. 
We  have  seen  how  Professor  James  compares  it  to 


4 


44 


Vital  Lies 


Protestantism ;  Mr  Schiller  traces  the  heresy  so  far 
back  as  Protogoras,  and  shows  us  Plato  himself  busy 
mahgning  it  ("  Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  32  et  seq.). 
We  have  noticed  also  both  these  Pragmatists'  insistence 
on  the  strenuous  earnestness,  the  adventurous  courage 
of  those  who  dare  to  Will-to-BeUeve  what  they  want  to 
beUeve,  who  are  spirited  enough  to  Make  Truth,  which 
is  truth  for  them,  instead  of  waiting  to  jfind  out  what  is 
truth  on  its  own  account.  Professor  James  goes  a  step 
further  :  he  compares  the  Pragmatist  to  a  humbler  but 
more  indispensable  hero,  the  watchful,  disinterested,  in- 
trepid bobby.  Here  is  the  passage,  instructive  in  many 
ways.  Listen  to  "  Human  Immortahty,"  pp.  39-40 : 
"  And  whether  we  care  or  not  for  inmiortaUty  in  itself, 
we  ought,  as  mere  critics  doing  police  duty  among  the 
vagaries  of  mankind  to  insist  on  the  illogicaUty  of  a 
denial.  .  .  .  How  much  more  ought  we  to  ir^sist,  as  lovers 
of  truth,  when  the  denial  is  that  of  such  a  vital  hope  of 
mankind."  I  have  ventured  to  itahcize  because  I 
desire  to  call  attention  to  that  "  how  much  more," 
and  to  speculate  on  its  meaning.  We  are,  the  reader 
sees,  already  critics  doing  'police  service^  and  apparently 
also  lovers  of  truth.  Is  Professor  James  urging  us  to 
be  even  more  critical  than  we  should  otherwise  be 
because  one  of  the  two  views  under  examination  is  of 
vital  importance  ?  This  seems  reasonable  enough. 
But  then  follows  the  clause  "  how  much  more''  Is 
our  love  of  truth  to  incline  us  to  even  greater  love  of 


I 


The  Two  Pragmatisms    45 

truth  because  of  the  vital  importance  of  one  of  the 
two  alternatives  ?  Or  are  we,  lovers  of  truth,  to  let 
our  love  of  truth  be  biassed  in  favour  of  a  vital  hope 
of  mankind?  Or  are  we  to  love  truth  even  more 
fervently  than  before  (for  that  establishes  us  in 
the  love  of  truth  before  these  proceedings  began) 
because  there  is  a  particular  vital  hope  which,  although 
it  may  be  false,  may  also  happen  to  be  true  ?  I  will 
not  use  my  Right-to-Bdieve  in  deciding  which  of  these 
possible  meanings  is  the  one  intended  by  Professor 
James.  I  will  not  even  (not  being  a  Pragmatist) 
wager  that  Professor  James  must  have  decided  between 
these  meanings  himself.  I  will  remain  in  crass  agnostic 
uncertainty,  and  reflect  that  it  may  be  with  Professor 
James,  as  with  Protagoras  himself,  the  extraordinary 
value  and  suggestiveness  of  whose  famous  dictum  re- 
sides, as  we  are  told  by  Mr  Schiller  in  "  the  concise- 
ness which  has  led  to  these  divergent  interpretations  " 
("  Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  32  et  seq.).  One  thing 
remains,  however,  certain  even  to  the  most  stiffnecked 
rationalist :  these  Pragmatists  may  be  trusted  when 
they  describe  themselves  as  lovers  of  truth.  For  have 
they  not  told  us  that  truth  is  individual,  temporary, 
fluid,  horn  of  a  sea  of  desires  (besides  being,  like  Aphro- 
dite, presumably  attractive),  in  short,  something 
which  is  accepted,  which  is  chosen,  and  even  which  is 
made  by  ourselves  (Schiller,  "  Studies  in  Humanism," 
p.  208). 


46 


Vital  Lies 


i 
^1 


If  the  Pragmatism  of  Messrs  James  and  Schiller 
were  Uke  that  of  Mr  Peirce,  merely  a  method  for 
"making  our  ideas  clear,"  its  promulgation  would 
undeniably   further   the   philosophic   training   of   the 
pubHc  and  increase  the  scientific  discipUne  of  philo- 
sophers ;  but  useful  although  such  philosophic  training 
and  scientific  disciphne  might  be,  it  would  scarcely 
produce    propaganda    whose    persuasive    enthusiasm 
recalls  the  prospectus  of  a  personaUy  conducted  hoKday 
trip:     "With   the   right   guides   such   ascents   (into 
metaphysics)    are    safe,"    writes    Mr    SchiUer ;     "we 
shall    return    refreshed    from    our    excursion."    StiU 
less,  perhaps,  would  mere  additional  clearness  in  our 
ideas  be  pressed  upon  our  acceptance  in  the  "  Do  you 
reaUy  know  what  you  are  in  want  of  ?  "  style  which 
we   associate  with  typewriters,  encyclopedias,  patent 
foods  and  similar  boons   to  mankind.    We  are  not 
accustomed  to  have  what  Mr  Peirce  caUed  the  Logic 
of  Science  presented  in  words  hke  those  of  Professor 
James :  "  You  may  find  that  what  I  take  the  Uberty 
of  caUing  the  Pragmatistic  or  mehoristic  type ...  is 
exactly  what  you  require." 

But  once  we  understand  that  we  are  no  longer  talking 
about  the  Logic  of  Science,  and  once  we  recognize  the 
fundamental  distinction  between  the  «  humble  "  Prag- 


The  Two  Pragmatisms    47 

matism  of  Mr  Peirce  and  the  "  more  revolutionary 
and  adequate "  Pragmatism  of  Messrs  James  and 
Schiller,  we  shall  take  in  why  these  philosophers  are 
so  passionately  anxious  that  we  should  try  their 
panacea.  That  panacea  is  not  intended  to  "  make 
our  ideas  clear  "  ;  it  is  calculated  to  teach  us  to  Will- 
to-Believe  and  to  Make  Truth.  The  Pragmatism  of  Mr 
Peirce  is  a  formula  of  the  "  Logic  of  Science."  The 
Pragmatism  of  Messrs  W.  James  and  Schiller  is,  so 
far  as  it  possesses  any  originality,  a  method  of  apolo- 
getics, a  not  always  strictly  grammatical  new  Grammar 
of  Assent.  When  we  complete  the  quotation  from 
Professor  James's  Pragmatism,  we  find  that  what  he 
recommends  to  us  in  his  farewell  flourish  of  self-adver- 
tisement is  the  Pragmatistic  type  .  .  .  not  merely 
of  Philosophy,  but  of  Theism.  And  similarly  the 
postulate  which  Mr  Schiller  shows  us  as  not  yet  evolving 
into  an  axiom  is  the  postulate  of  individual  survival 
after  death.  "  Is  immortality  a  postulate  ? "  he 
writes,"  ...  at  present  we  are  too  profoundly 
ignorant  as  to  what  men  actually  desire  in  the  matter, 
and  why  and  how  to  decide  what  they  ought  to 
desire.  Hence,  pending  the  publication  of  a  statistical 
inquijy  undertaken  by  the  American  Branch  of  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research,  profitable  discussions 
of  this  question  must  be  postponed."  ^ 

^  Schiller,  "  Axioms  as  Postulates — Personal  Idealism,"  p.  122. 
Lest  the  reader   should  imagine  from   this  that  the  American 


'I 

•I 


In    short,    "the  practical   differences"  which    we 
find    in    the    concluding    chapters    of    Messrs    W. 
James    and    Schiller's    various   volumes,    but   which 
the    humbUr    Pragmatism    of    Mr    Peirce     by    no 
means    leads   to,   seems   to   be    the   acceptance,   in 
consideration  of   beneficial   results,   of   the   trvth   of 
some   variety  of  theology;    or,   in  default  of  such 
or  perhaps  m   addition   thereunto,  of    the  truth  of 
some  mediumistic  kind  of  "spirituahsm."    And  even 
readers  disinchned  to  beUeve  what  suits  their  own 
preferences,    may,    I    think,   accept    the    hypothesis 

I'^^f  M  '  f  •^•^-  ^  «"*"«  *^  ^""^^  ''^'^'^<^  of  the  State  of  the 
S^lf    ^^r^'*  r ^  '^'  demand-for-immortality  postuladon  Mr 

l^mains  a  me,,  p^t^ate  without  devel^l^llTso  ^^ W 
edge    :  forgettmg  that,  if  postulates  are  merely  to  make  kZ«uZl 
to.,.ead  of  coaling  nature  into  acquiescence  wifh  ouT^h^  as  ^r 
Schiller  had  previously  led  us  to  expect   we  onX  tTkT'       ^ 
satMed  (moraUy  and  emotiouaUy.  e";:  '  ifTetn  ^  edge  S 
turn  out  contrary  to  the  postulate  ,•  for  knowledge  that^Tcan^ot 
ge   what-we.  want  would,  by  this  new  definition,  be  InowW« 
quite  as  much  as  knowledge  that  we-could-get-what^^e-want     It 
seems,  therefore,  to  be  left  to  our  Wm  i,  kJi:     ""*' "'^•*™-     « 
Mr  SchiUer  meaks  :  ^M-lo-MKyc  to  choose  whether 

It  *,1,L'!!!ii  P^P'*"""  "*«  immortality  sufficiently  to  postulate 

m^X^  ^       ,  '■"'"'  "''"''*'  "■«"  "  '"""ortaUty  orCt     o1 

pelpLXSlrtX  '■"""''""'^  ™««'--  -  P---  t 


The  Two  Pragmatisms    49 


that  this  particular  Pragmatism  differs  from  that 
of  Mr  Peirce  in  being  (to  use  Mr  SchiUer's  favourite 
words)  "genetically  explicable"  by  the  mystic 
union  of  scientific  Psychology  with  Psychical  Re- 
search. 


\ 


D 


It  •'* 


CHAPTER  II 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


WHAT   is    truth?     asked   Pilate,   implying 
thereby  that  there  was  no  such  thing. 
And  he  went  on  to  wash  his  hands  of 
practical  responsibilities. 

The  Pragmatists  raise  Pilate's  question,  but  they 
are,  unlike  him,  essentially  ethical,  efficient,  and 
responsible.  What  they  wash  their  hands  of  is  intel- 
lectual consequences,  and  they  answer  :  "  Examine  the 
practical  results." 

But  of  course  not  without  reservations  ;  for  practical 
persons  do  not  give  themselves  away,  and  morahty  is 
a  matter  of  moderation  and  juste  milieu.  So,  after 
telling  us  ("  Pragmatism,"  page  204)  that ''  you  can  say 
of  it  [an  opinion].  .  .  either  thai  '  it  is  useful  because  it 
is  true '  or  that  *  U  is  true  because  it  is  useful ' — both 
these  'phrases  mean  exactly  the  same  thing  "—Professor 
WiUiam  James  explains  that  this  self-same  meaning  of 
the  two  phrases  is,  "  that  here  is  an  idea  that  gets  fulfilled 
and  can  be  verified.    True  is  the  name  for  whatever  idea 


What  is  Truth? 


5j_ 

starts  the  venficaiion-process,  useful  is  the  name  for  its 
completed  function  in  experience." 

This  sentence  has  the  pleasant  cogency  of  aU  sym- 
metrical things,  for  there  is  an  esthetic  will  to  believe, 
which   the  Pragmatists  do  not  indeed  discuss  but 
occa^ionaUy  appeal  to.    Truth  is  utihty,   utiHty  is 
truth.    It  is  almost  Keats's  famous  formula.    But 
Keats,  being  a  poet,  is  satisfied  with  one  lyric  assertion. 
A  philosopher  never  merely  asserts  ;  he  refers  to  another 
assertion.    The  identity  of  "  truth  "  and  "  usefulness  " 
IS  explained  by  Professor  James  by  each  of  these  terms 
bemg  m  the  same  relation  to  a  third  term-namely, 
"verification-process."     The    same    relation?     Pro- 
fessor James  says  that  when  we  say  of  an  opinion  that 
"  It  IS  useful  because  it  is  true,"  or  "  true  because  it  is 
useful,"  "  both  these  phrases  mean  exactly  the  same  thing, 
namely  that  here  is  an  idea  that  gets  fulfilled  and  can  be 
verified."    There  can  be  no  mistake :   the  identity  of 
meaning  rests  upon  identical  relation  to  the  verifica- 
tion-process.   There  buzzes  through  our  mind  a  re- 
assuring   reminiscence    of    the    Euclidean    formula: 
"  thmgs  which  are  equal  to  the  same  thing,"  etc. 

But  is  identity  of  relation  the  same  as  identity  of 
quahty  ?  If  two  men  are  exactly  like  a  third,  they 
must  be  exactly  like  each  other ;  but  if  two  men  are 
m  exactly  the  same  relation  to  a  third-say  in  the 
relation  of  a  friend,  or  pupil,  or  enemy-are  they  hke 
each  other  m  everything  else  ?    Are  only  such  ideaa 


52 


Vital  Lies 


as  are  useful  liable  to  be  fulfilled  and  verified  in  the  same 
sense  as  ideas  that  are  true  ?  No  one  would  take  the 
trouble  to  verify  an  idea  he  thought  useless.  Useless 
in  what  sense  ?  Useless  to  his  health,  his  purse,  his 
reputation,  his  hope  of  heaven  ?  What  cavilHng ! 
exclaims  the  Pragmatist.  Why  of  course  not  any  of 
these  utilities  :  useless,  of  course,  to— to — to  .  .  .  use- 
less in  the  sense  of  intellectually  unsatisfactory  ;  well, 
useless  because,  you  know,  ideas  aren't  useful,  really 
useful,  except  when   they  are  true. 

Anti-Pragmatist.  Ah,  of  course  as  a  Pragmatist 
you  have  a  belief  in  the  usefulness  of  truth  and  only 
truth,  such  as  we — I  am  not  sure  what  you  would 
call  us — have  not  attained  to,  for  we  have  heard  not 
only  of  the  Noble  Lies  which  Plato  allowed  the 
Guardians  of  his  Republic,  but  also  of  the  Vital  Lies 
of  the  doctor  in  Ibsen's  play ;  and  we  even  incline 
to  think,  with  certain  modernists  and  anthropologists, 
that  a  vehicle  of  mistakes  or  Ues  may  have  been  neces- 
sary for  the  progress  of  sundry  useful  institutions  and 
standards ;  nay,  even  with  M.  Georges  Sorel,  that 
for  the  highest  social  purposes  you  can  get  use 
out  of  a  myth  just  because  it  cannot  be  verified  or 
fulfiUed. 

Pragmatist.  That's  neither  here  nor  there.  Except 
in  one  Uttle  reference,  evidently  ironical,  of  Mr  Schiller's, 
Pragmatism  does  not  concern  itself  with  Ues.  It  is  a 
new  mode  of  defining  truth.    And  I  suppose  you  will 


What  is  Truth? 


53 


not  push  your  cavilling  to  the  length  of  denying  that 
truth  is  useful  ? 

Anti-Pragmatist.  I  think,  Socrates,  that  truth  is 
useful  on  the  whole,  though  not  in  every  individual 
case.  And  that  is  compensated  by  the  fact  that  even 
in  the  individual  case  useful  lies  would  not  be  useful 
if  they  were  not  mistaken  for  truths. 

Pragmatist.  Exactly!  For  the  peculiarity  of 
Pragmatism,  and  what  distinguishes  it  from  intel- 
lectualism,  is  that  it  enormously  widens  the  field  of 
agreement ;   it  really  does  see  truth  everywhere. 

Anti-Pragmatist.  Well  now,  to  return  to  this 
"  verification-process,"  in  which  Professor  James  sees 
the  identification  of  truth  and  usefulness. 

Pragmatist.  I  beg  your  pardon.  Professor  James 
never  says  that  truth  and  usefulness  are  identical.  He 
says  that  to  say  that  an  opinion  "  is  useful  because  it  is 
true  "  and  an  opinion  "  is  true  because  it  is  useful " 
are  phrases  meaning  exactly  the  same  thing. 

Anti-Pragmatist.  Well !  I  should  have  said  that 
they  are  phrases  having  the  same  shape,  like  "  a  rug 
made  out  of  a  tiger  "  and  "  a  tiger  made  out  of  a  rug." 
But— teU  me  :  do  you  really  think  that  "  an  opinion 
is  useful  because  it  is  true  "  means  exactly  the  same  as 
"  an  opinion  is  true  because  it  is  useful  "  ? 

Pragmatist.  Of  course  they  don't  mean  the  same 
thing  in  the  general  sense.  That's  evident  and  left  to 
the  intelligence  of  the  reader.     Pragmatism  always 


54 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth? 


55 


counts  upon  the  intelligence  of  the  reader — no,  not  on 
his  intelligence,  rather  upon  his  intuition.  You  re- 
member how  splendidly  Bergson  has  defined  intuition 
as  originating  in  action. 

Anti-Pragmatist.  Why,  I  thought  he  said  that 
it  was  inteUigence  which  was  a  mere  rough  and  ready 
instrument  of  action.   .  .   . 

Pragmatist.  Exactly.  Action's  negative  correlate. 
WeU,  Pragmatism  always  counts  upon  the  reader's 
intuition  or  intelligence,  whichever  he  happens  to 
have.  Probably,  as  you  say,  on  his  intelligence, 
because  Pragmatism  wastes  no  time  in  defining  but 
makes  straight  for  action. 

Anti-Pragmatist.  But  I  thought  intelligence  did 
define.   .   .   . 

Pragmatist.  Did  I  say  intelligence  ?  Of  course 
I  meant  intelligence  in  the  sense  of  intuition.  Bergson 
is  naturally  with  us  Pragmatists,  he  is  &  Pragmatist ; 
only  you  must  leave  off  defining  his  meaning  and  merely 
apply  it  in  order  to  recognize  his  Pragmatism.  Prag- 
matism makes  straight  for  appUcation. 

Anti-Pragmatist.  And  anything  can  become  a 
Pragmatistic  truth  if  appUed  by  a  Pragmatist  ? 

Pragmatist.  Ha  !  That's  good,  that's  very  good  ! 
You  are  a  Pragmatist  at  heart,  everybody  is  a  Prag- 
matist at  heart — at  least,  if  not  an  Anti-Pragmatist, 
and  perhaps  most  of  all  then !  All  the  same,  I  must 
tell  you  that  you  were  misquoting  Professor  James 


I 


most  grossly.  What  Professor  James  does  say  is  that 
utihty  and  truth  are,  as  you  yourself  correctly  para- 
phrased it  the  moment  before,  the  same  with  regard 
to  the  verification-process.  Look  !  here  it  is  :  "  True 
is  the  name  for  whatever  idea  starts  the  verification- 
process,  useful  is  the  name  for  its  completed  function 
in  experience." 

Anti-Pragmatist  (rather  overcome).  But — is  "  com- 
pleting "  an  idea's  function  in  experience  the  same  as 
**  starting  "  the  verification-process  ? 

Pragmatist.  Of  course.  Don't  we  constantly  see 
the  completion  of  one  function  overlapping  the  starting 
of  another  function  ?  And  isn't  overlapping  occupy- 
ing the  same  space,  having  therefore  a  quaUty  of 
sameness  ?  But  test  by  application :  can  anyone 
deny  that,  coeteris  paribus,  and  in  the  long  run,  true 
opinions  will  be  found  to  be  useful,  and  of  course,  vice 
versa,  useful  opinions  will  be  found  (coeteris  farihuSy 
naturally  !)  to  be  true  ?  Surely,  truth  is,  in  a  great 
many  cases — whenever  it  isn't  the  contrary — very 
useful. 

Anti-Pragmatist.    But — haven't  we  known  that  all 

along  ? 

Pragmatist  (triumphant).  Of  course  you  have ! 
"  A  new  name  for  some  old  ways  of  thinking "  * 
— that's  what's  so  splendid  in  Pragmatism.  But  then, 
nobody  before  had  completed  the  identification ;  nobody 

1  Subtitle  of  Professor  James's  "  Pragmatism." 


56 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth? 


57 


had  shown  that  the  single  case  could  be  made  to  in- 
clude all  the  cases ;  no  one  had  understood,  or  rather 
thoroughly  applied  (for  application  is  the  pragmatic 
test),  what  is  meant  by  the  formulas,  "  in  the  long  run  " 
and  "  caeteris  paribus."  Besides,  no  other  philosophy 
had  seen  how  it  all  hinges  on  the  verification-process. 
Really,  putting  modesty  aside,  I  think  one  may  say 
that  it  takes  Pragmatism  to  say  that  truth  is  what 
starts  the  verification-process. 

(ExU  Pragmatist,  exulting.) 


II 

The  Verification-Process— the  words  keep  haunting 
my  mind  Uke  a  solenm  phrase  of  music.    I  sympathize 
vaguely  with  my  Pragmatist  friend's  jubilation.    If 
the  form  of  that  dictum  of  Professor  James  is  sym- 
metrical and  gracious,  its  substance— the  Verification- 
Process— is    massive    and    reassuring.      Verification- 
Process.    Yes,  of  course.    If  we  want  to  know  whether 
an  opinion  is  true,  it  is  a  good  plan,  according  to  Charles 
S.  Peirce,  to  think  out  the  consequences  implied  in 
the  statement,  and  try  whether  those  consequences 
tally.    You  can  tread  with  all  your  might  on  a  real 
pearl  without  its  being  crushed,  but  you  can't  do  the 
same  by  a  Roman  pearl.    If,  therefore,  you  reduce 
your  pearl  to  a  mush  by  your  stampings,  you  have 


I 


*^ 


appUed  practice  to  an  opinion,  and  you  have — with 
intellectual  joy  but  perhaps  a  Uttle  human  annoyance 
at  the  loss  both  of  the  pearl  and  of  your  hopes — gone 
successfully  through  the  Verification-Process.  What- 
ever the  truth  may  be,  this  much  is  true.  The  Verifica- 
tion-Process is,  therefore,  the  one  at  whose  completion 
we  find  that  we  have  (or  have  not)  an  opinion  which  is 
true.  This  Uttle  Verification-Process  (our  example  of 
the  Roman  pearl)  has  therefore  proved  Professor 
James's  opinion  about  Verification-Processes  and  truth 
to  be  itself  a  truth,  a  remarkable  truth.  But  stay — 
something  has  gone  wrong  somewhere.  Somehow  or 
other,  that  doesn't  seem  to  have  been  Professor  James's 
opinion.  What  luas  Professor  James's  opinion  ?  Ah, 
here  it  is :  "  True  is  the  name  for  whatever  idea  starts  the 
Verification-Process."  But  what  starts  the  Verifica- 
Process — say  in  the  case  of  the  real  pearl  and  the  false 
one — is  the  desire  to  get  at  the  truth,  the  lack  of  truth, 
the  doubt.  The  truth  then  was  at  the  end  of  the 
Verification-Process  ;  it  was  its  result.  But  that's  not 
what  ought  to  have  resulted  from  our  Uttle  private 
Verification-Process  :  if  Professor  James's  dictum  was 
true,  truth  ought  to  have  been  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Verification-Process.  Perhaps  truth  was  indepen- 
dent of  the  Verification-Process !  These  matters  are 
puzzUng,  and  in  our  desire  to  verify  this  Verifica- 
tion-Process business,  we  may  have  been  forget- 
ting what  the  real  pearl  was  to  do  and  the  false 


58 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth  ? 


59 


one.    Perhaps  it  was  the  real  pearl  which  was  to  be 
crushed. 

Collecting  my  thoughts,  I  seek  once  more  for  clearer 
understanding  of  that  sentence.    I  will  let  alone  that 
troublesome  first  half-sentence,  "True  is  the  name 
for  whatever  idea  starts  the  Verification- Process;'  and 
proceed   to  the  second,   which   will   probably  make 
everything  plain  :  "  useful  is  the  name  for  its  completed 
function  in  experience:'    There  arises  a  trifling  gram- 
matical doubt :  what  is  the  noun  behind  the  pronoun 
its  "  ?     "  True  is  the  name  for  whatever  idea  starts  the 
Verification-Process ;    useful  is  the  name  fcyr  its  com- 
pleted function  in  experience:'    Ought  we   to  read, 
"useful  is  the  name  for  whatever-starts-the- Verifica- 
tion-Process's   completed    function    in    experience"? 
This  seems  a  httle  heavy  for  so  fine  a  styUst.     I  think 
we  ought  to  read,  "  useful  is  the  name  for  whatever- 
has-been-named-true's   (shall  we  say  truth's?)  com- 
pleted function  in  experience."    Or  shaU  we  go  back 
to  the  previous  sentence  in  search  of  a  nominative  to 
that  "  is,"  and  read,  "  true  is  the  name  of  whatever 
idea  starts  the  Verification-Process,  useful  is  the  name 
for  its  [the  idea's]  completed  function  in  experience  "  ? 
Evidently.    One  must  not  expect   verbal   pedantry 
from  a  great  writer.     Besides,  see  how  true  it  is  that 
with  patience  and  sympathy  one  will  always,  as  St 
Catherine  of  Siena  remarked,  find  the  sweet  reasonable 
soul  of  people,  and  also  of  people's  sentences.     I  do 


I 


not,  however,  yet  grasp  fully  the  meaning  of  "  com- 
pleted function  in  experience." 

"  Does  "  experience  "  mean  experiment  ?  In  that 
case  we  should  be  back  at  the— I  beg  its  pardon,  but 
it  has  given  a  lot  of  trouble — the  beneficent  Verification- 
Process.  Of  course  the  function,  particularly  the  com- 
pleted fimction,  of  an  idea,  is  likely  to  be  useful  in  the 
Verification-Process ;  indeed,  an  idea,  even  an  idea's 
function,  would  seem  more  than  merely  useful,  actually 
indispensable  in  an  experiment.  But  this  would  come 
to  meaning  that  while  truth  is  what  sets  us  examin- 
ing whether  it  is  true,  utility  is  what  comes  out  as  the 
result  of  that  inquiry :  truth  would  have  started  the 
Verification-Process,  and  utility  have  completed  it. 

This  seems  clear,  as  clear  almost  as  Professor  James's 
way  of  putting  the  thing — in  fact,  amazingly  like  it ; 
so  true  is  it  that  it  is  difficult  for  cold  criticism  to 
improve  upon  the  expression  of  a  great  thought,  since 
expression  and  thought  are  apt  to  bubble  up  together 
in  the  master-mind. 

Utility  would  have  completed  the  Verification- 
Process  started  by  truth.  We  seem  to  have  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  a  useful  idea  is  an  idea  which 
we  try  to  verify. 

But  when  the  Pragmatist  decides  to  accept  the  ideas 
(let  us  say)  of  free-will  and  of  a  pluralistic  universe 
because,  like  Professor  James,  he  thinks  them  useful, 
can  that  Pragmatist  be  correctly  described  as  **  starting 


4 


6o 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth  ? 


61 


the  Verification-Process'*!  I  should  have  thought 
that  he  was  stopping  it  off,  as  much  as  the  possessor 
of  a  doubtful  pearl  who  forbears  from  stamping  on  it 
in  his  desire,  shall  we  say  in  Pragmatistic  phrase  to 
get  its  "  cash-value."  ^ 


III 

The  Assimilation  op  Truth 

*' PragmcUism,''  says    Professor  James,   "asks   the 
usual  question.** 

I  hope  to  have  shown  in  my  introductory  chapters 
that  there  are  two  Pragmatisms  and  two  Questions, 
the  difference  between  the  two  Pragmatisms— namely, 
Mr  Peirce's  and  Professor  James's— consisting  exactly 
in  the  different  question  which  each  is  really  asking, 
and  the  different  answer,  also,  which  each  is  furnish- 
ing.   But  in  the  comedy  of  errors  of  Will-to-BeUeve 
philosophy,  the  two  Pragmatisms  run  in  and  out  hke 
twins  of  similar  aspect  but  different  sex  and  character  ; 
they  dance  yas  seals  in  rapid  alternation— is  that  the 
boy  or  the  girl  ?  is  there  a  boy  and  a  girl  ?— disappear- 
ing just  as  we  think  we  know  one  apart ;   nay,  occa- 
sionally   and    even    pretty  often,    they  furnish    the 

^^  » W.   James,    "  Varieties    of    Religious    Experience,"    p.   443 ; 
"  What  is  its  cash  value  In  terms  of  particular  experience  ?  " 


bewildering  spectacle  of  a  whirhng  metamorphosis 
where  both  are  present  only  to  seem  one. 

"  Pragmatism  asks  its  usual  question."  Quick, 
snatch  at  the  question  and  see  which  Pragmatism. 
"  Grant  an  idea  or  belief  to  be  true,  it  says,  what  concrete 
difference  will  its  being  true  make  in  anyone's  O/Ctual 
life?**  Which  Pragmatism  is  this?  The  Will-to- 
Beheve,  of  course ;  for  note  the  expression,  "  any  one*8 
actual  life.**  But  it  is  not  every  "  concrete  difference," 
or  even  abstract  difference,  in  the  hfe  of  somebody, 
since  it  is  in  the  somebody's  thought  ?  Is  not  a 
chemical  experiment  in  the  chemist's  life,  and  its 
upshot  even  more  so,  speUing  as  it  does  the  success  or 
defeat  of  a  supposition  ?  Need  this  quotation  mean 
anything  beyond  the  rule  that  a  difference  in  opinion 
must  mean  a  difference  in  the  facts  about  which  that 
opinion  is  held  and  a  difference  in  the  facts  due  to  this 
difference?  This  is  Peircean  Pragmatism,  pure  and 
simple.  And  note  the  next  sentence  :  "  How  will  the 
truth  be  realized  ?  **  Could  anything  be  more  thinly 
intellectual,  more  disterested,  nay,  disembodied  than 
that? 

"  What  experiences  will  be  different  from  those  which 
would  obtain  if  the  belief  were  false  ?  **  Experiences — 
why,  of  course,  intellectual  experiences,  or  experi- 
ences looked  upon  from  the  intellectual  standpoint ; 
every  experiment  is  such  an  experience,  and  every 
scientific  investigation,  from  Abbot  Mendel  sowing 


62 


Vital  Lies 


his  peas  to  Signer  Boni  digging  up  the  Roman  Forum, 
means  nothing  save  the  watching  for  differences  and 
resemblances  in  experience.  Moreover,  the  summing 
up  of  the  sentence  makes  our  certainty  only  more  cer- 
tain. "  What,  in  short,  is  the  trutVs  cash-value  in 
experiential  terms  ?  "  This  is  pure  Peircean  Pragma- 
tism— in  fact,  perhaps  purer  than  Peirce's  Peircean 
Pragmatism,  since  that  word  "  cash- value  "  is  merely 
a  more  appeaUng  way  of  saying  equivalent ;  for  a 
theory  can  be  doled  out  to  us  not  in  the  abstract 
promissory  cheque  but  in  so  many  httle  facts,  which, 
like  sovereigns  or  shilUngs,  we  can  turn  round,  and 
spin,  and  test,  and  count  in  easily  managed  heaps  of 
four  or  five,  and  each  of  which  can  itself,  like  the 
sovereigns  or  shiUings,  have  its  own  "  cash- value." 
There  is  absolutely  no  reason  why  cash-value  in  ex- 
periential terms  should  suggest  any  valuing  of  ideas 
for  what  amounts  of  pleasure  or  profit  or  safety  or 
edification  there  may  attach  to  them. 

And  now  comes  the  last  sentence  :  "  True  ideas  are 
those  that  we  can  assimilate,  validate,  corroborate,  and 
verify.    False  ideas  are  those  that  we  cannot" 

Let  us  seek  for  the  cash-value  of  these  words  by 
trying  what  other  words  they  will  exchange  for. 
"  VaUdate,"  "  Corroborate  "  ;  so  far  we  have  mere 
augmentations  of  "  verify."  Now,  to  "  verify  "  means 
(I  am  quoting  Samuel  Johnson)  to  "  justify  against 
a  charge  of  falsehood ;    to  confirm ;    to  prove  true." 


What  is  Truth? 


63 


In  fact,  this  new  statement  means  nothing  more  re- 
condite than  that  true  ideas  are  those  which,  with  the 
reinforcing  appHed  by  "  corroborate "  and  perhaps 
by  "  validate,"  we  can  prove  true.  A  true  thing  is 
one  which  has  been  found  to  be  true.  It  seems  a 
little  thin,  and  undoubtedly  old-fashioned ;  yet,  why 
should  we  expect  that  an  adjective  made  to  designate 
one  particular  quaUty  should  be  translatable  into 
another  adjective  made  to  designate  another  quahty  ? 
Near,  that  which  is  not  far ;  far,  that  which  is  not 
near  ;  true,  that  which  is  not  false. 

"  Pragm<jtism  .  .  .  sees  the  answer :  '  True  ideas  are 
those  that  we  can  validate,  corroborate,  and  verify,^ " — 
verify,  prove  to  be  true.  And  a  very  good  answer, 
surely ! 

But  in  my  analysis  of  this  definition  of  truth  there 
is  a  word  which  I  have  purposely  left  out.  The  word 
— and  it  comes  first,  overwhelmed  by  the  succeeding 
wave  of  "  proving  to  be  true  " — that  word  is  "  assimi- 
late." This  is  an  addition  to  the  statement  that  a 
true  idea  is  what  we  can  prove  (and  double  prove : 
**  vaUdate,"  and  triple  prove  :  "  corroborate  ")  true. 
"  Assimilate  "  (I  again  refer  to  Johnson)  has  in  English 
two  meanings  :  first,  **  to  bring  to  a  Ukeness  or  re- 
semblance "  ;  and  second,  "  to  turn  to  its  own  nature 
by  digestion."  Neither  of  these  two  meanings  brings 
"  assimilate  "  under  the  heading  of  "  proving  true." 
Hence,  as  I  have  just  remarked,  the  statement  that 


64 


Vital  Lies 


"  true  ideas  are  those  which  can  be  proved  true," 
is  being  added  to  by  the  information  that  true  ideas 
are  those  which  can  be  assimilated  either  in  the  sense 
(a)  of  being  brought  to  a  hkeness  or  resemblance,  or 
(6)  of  being  turned  to  its  own  nature  by  digestion. 
Indeed,  it  seems  a  pity  that,  in  sunmiing  up  of  the 
pragmatistic  answer.  Professor  James  should  not  have 
isolated  and  insisted  upon  this  addition  to  the  usual 
and  tautological  answer  to  "  What  is  truth  ?  "  Now 
it  remains  to  find  out  in  which  of  these  two  Johnsonian 
senses,  or  in  what  other  sense,  unsuspected  by  the 
eighteenth  century,  Professor  James  intends  his  reader 
to  understand  that  word  "  assimilate." 

While  hunting  for  a  quotation  which  may  settle 
this  question,  my  own  mind  sets  to  idling  round 
that  word  "  assimilate."  And,  as  I  cannot  get  any 
forwarder  by  thinking  in  what  way  assimilation  is  a 
test  of  truth,  I  go  on  to  the  negative  side  of  the  matter. 
I  quite  agree  with  Professor  James  that  false  ideas 
cannot  be  vahdated,  corroborated,  and  verified— in 
other  words,  that  false  ideas  cannot  be  proved  true. 
But  assimilated— can  a  false  idea  not  be  assimilated  ? 
I  have  spent  my  Ufe  under  the  impression  (subject  to 
correction  or  the  Verification-Process,  of  course)  that 
a  large  part  of  the  world's  business,  ever  since  the 
beginning,  had  been  the  assimilation,  in  both  the 
Johnsonian  meanings,  of  ideas  that  were  subsequently 
neither  vahdated  nor  verified,  although  I  am  sorry 


What  is  Truth? 


65 


to  find  they  were  often  corroborated  on  account  of 
a  practical  cash-value.  Joshua  must  have  assimi- 
lated a  wrong  idea  about  the  sun  before  he  fell  to 
stopping  it,  and  this  wrong  idea  seems  to  have  been 
corroborated  both  by  the  Jews  of  his  immediate 
entourage  and  by  the  theologians  salaried  for  teaching 
Bible  miracles.  Indeed,  the  thorough  assimilation  of 
that  particular  astronomic  fallacy  is  proved  by  GaUleo's 
imprisonment  for  having  said  that  it  was  a  fallacy. 
The  cash-value  of  that  particular  astronomical  idea 
was  in  this  case  dissimilar  to  GaUleo  and  to  his  judges. 


IV 


Practical  Guidance 


"  True  ideas  are  those  that  we  can  assimilate,  validate, 
corroborate,  and  verify. ^^  We  must  hold  on  to  this 
word  "  assimilate,"  since  it  evidently  contains  the 
addition  made  by  the  Pragmatism  of  Professor  James 
and  Mr  Schiller  not  merely  to  the  Peircean  Pragma- 
tism which  made  our  ideas  clear,  but  to  the  old  irre- 
fragable, tautological  answer :  "  True  ideas  are  those 
that  we  can  .  .  .  validate,  corroborate,  and  verify  " — 
or,  in  less  philosophical  Enghsh,  "  true  ideas  are  those 
which  can  be  proved  to  be  true." 

Let  us  therefore  try  to  discover  in  what  "  assimila- 


66 


Vital  Lies 


tion  "  consists,  and  with  what  a  true  idea  must  assimi- 
late in  order  to  be  true. 

Unluckily  for  this  inquiry,  that  word  "  assimilate  " 
has  been  withdrawn  from  circulation  ;  I  cannot  find 
it  again  in  Professor  James's  text,  and  am  obliged  to 
himt  about  for  some  other  expression  which  may 
determine  its  cash-value,  if  not  in  experience,  at  all 
events  in  intention.  The  nearest  approach  I  can  find 
is  "  to  agree  "  ;  "  our  ideas  agree  with  reality.''^  Here 
is  what  Professor  James  tells  us  about  such  agreement 
(**  Pragmatism,"  page  212) :  "To'  agree  '  in  the  widest 
sense  with  a  reality  can  only  mean  to  be  guided  either 
straight  up  to  it  or  into  its  surroundings,  or  to  he  put 
into  such  working  touch  with  it  as  to  handle  either  it  or 
something  connected  with  it  better  than  if  we  disagreed. 
Better  either  intellectually  or  practically !  .  .  .  To  copy 
a  reality  is,  indeed,  one  very  important  way  of  agreeing 
with  it,  but  it  is  far  from  being  essential.  The  essential 
thing  is  the  process  of  being  guided.  Any  ideal  that 
helps  us  to  deal,  whether  practically  or  intellectually y 
with  either  the  reality  or  its  belongings,  that  doesn't 
entangle  our  progress  in  frustrations,  that  fits,  in  fact, 
and  adapts  our  life  to  the  reality's  whole  setting,  will 
agree  sufificiently  to  meet  the  requirement.  It  unll  hold 
true  of  thai  reality. '' 

**  Assimilation,"  the  assimilation  which  was  one  of 
the  tests  of  whether  an  idea  is  true,  is  presumably  the 
same  thing  as  this  "  agreement  urith  reality,''  which  is 


,/ 


-.^ 


What  is  Truth? 


67 


itself  not  merely  a  "  copying  of  reality "  but  such 
"  guidance  "  as  "  adapts  our  life  to  the  reality's  whole 
setting."  "Life"  is  a  large  order.  Shall  we  try 
narrowing  down  the  possible  meaning  to  that  part  of 
our  Ufe  which  wants  to  know  about  this  reaUty  ? 
Evidently  not ;  for  that  portion  of  our  Hfe  is  already 
provided  for  under  Professor  James's  rubric  of  "  hand- 
ling reality  intellectually,"  a  rubric  to  which  he  adds  and 
opposes  (by  means  of  the  conjunction  "  or  ")  another 
rubric  of  handhng  reality  "  practically  "  ;  moreover, 
it  has  been  dismissed  as  "  one  very  important  way  of 
agreeing  with  it  [reality],  but  it  is  far  from  being  essential." 
"  The  essential  thing,"  he  continues,  "  is  .  .  .  being 
guided."  Guided,  guided  indeed  "intellectually,"  he 
tells  us — rather  unnecessarily,  since  the  intellectual 
guidance  could  guide  us  only  to  the  "  copying  of  reality  " 
he  has  already  dealt  with  before  we  came  to  the  guidance 
at  all.    But  also  guide  us  "  practically  "... 

"Practically."  For  if  the  intellectual  guidance 
leading  to  "  correct  copying  of  reality  "  can  obviously 
not  be  what  the  guided-to  copying  of  reality  is  itself 

not  allowed  to  be — namely,  the  "  essential  thing  " 

why,  then  we  are  thrown  back  upon  the  other  half  of 
the  "  guiding  "—that,  namely,  which,  duly  separated 
off  by  its  "  or,"  is  "  practical." 

But,  just  as  we  were  obUged  to  ask  what  was  "  assimi- 
lation "  ;  what  was  "  agreement  with  reality  " ;  and  what 
— whether  the  whole  or  only  one  side — ^was  meant  by 


68 


Vital  Lies 


"  our  lifej"  which  was  to  be  "  adapted  to  reality  "  ;  so 
we  have  now  to  ask  ourselves,  what  is  "  practical "  ? 
(All  these  inquiries  in  order  to  refine  and  enrich  that 
poor,  tautological  "  truth  is  what  can  be  proved  true^ 
Surely  no  one  can  complain  that  Pragmatism  dis- 
likes taking  intellectual  trouble !) 

Once  more,  however,  Professor  James  has  not  thought 
it  necessary — why  should  he  ? — to  define  exactly  what 
he  means  by  "  practical."  He  uses  that  word  again 
and  again,  but  leaves  the  meaning  to  his  reader's 
intelhgence.  My  own — perhaps  inadequate  to  the 
task — suggests  that  "  practical  "  may  possibly  mean 
**  expedient."  For  a  few  pages  further  on  ("  Prag- 
matism," page  222),  I  find,  itaUcized  in  the  text : 
"  '  The  truCy'  to  put  it  very  hrieflyj  is  only  the  expedient 
in  the  way  of  our  thinking,  just  as  '  the  right '  is  only 
the  expedient  in  the  way  of  our  behaving.  Expedient  in 
almost  any  fashion ;  and  expedient  in  the  long  run  and 
on  the  whole,  of  course ;  for  what  meets  expediently  all 
the  experience  in  sight  won't  necessarily  meet  all  farther 
experiences  equally  satisfactorily.^* 

Quite  true.  The  reahty  of  the  universe  will  eventu- 
ally turn  and  rend  an  idea  which  is  **  expedient  "  only 
in  a  hmited  sense — "  expedient "  for  one  person,  time, 
class,  or  purpose — and  hurl  the  rest  of  humanity,  or 
abstraction  humanity,  most  violently  back  upon  the 
"  true  "  (shall  we  say  the  real  true  ?)  and  the  univer- 
■ally  and  eternally  expedient.    Despite  the  contrary 


What  is  Truth? 


69 


teachings  of  M.  Bergson,  who  holds  that  practicaUty 
is  at  loggerheads  with  a  knowledge  of  reahties,  I  agree 
with  Professor  James  that  such  ultimate  reprisals  of 
reaUty  are  exceedingly  probable.  But  for  the  time 
being,  the  "  expedient  " — the  really,  eventually,  com- 
pletely expedient — remains  quite  as  difficult  of  defini- 
tion as  the  true.  Indeed,  perhaps  more  so ;  for  we 
can  hope  to  prove  that  a  few  ideas  are  true  ;  whereas 
doctors  may  differ  as  to  what  is  expedient  in  the  long 
run  and  on  the  whole,  particularly  with  the  encyclo- 
paedic addition,  "  in  almost  any  fashion." 

Let  us,  therefore,  in  our  search  for  the  pragmatistic 
addition  to  "  Truth  is  what  can  be  proved  true,"  turn 
back  to  an  earUer  part  of  Professor  James's  volume, 
that  volume  called  "  Pragmatism,  a  New  Name  for 
Some  Old  Ways  of  Thinking,"  and  dedicated  to  the 
memory  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  "  from  whom  I  [that  is, 
Professor  Jamesl  first  learned  the  pragmatic  openness 
of  mind,  and  whom  my  [Professor  James's]  fancy  likes 
to  picture  as  our  leader — were  he  alive  to-day  "  : 

"  Truth  is  one  species  of  good,  and  not,  as  is  usually 
supposed,  a  category  distinct  from  good,  and  co-ordinate 
with  it.  The  true  is  the  name  of  whatever  proves  itself 
to  be  good  in  the  way  of  belief,  and  good,  too,  for  definite, 
assignable  reasons.  Surely  you  must  admit  this,  that 
if  there  were  no  good  for  life  in  true  ideas,  or  if  the  know- 
ledge of  them  were  positively  disadvantageous  and  false 
ideas  the  only  useful  ones,  then  the  current  notion  that 


70 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth? 


71 


truth  is  divine  and  predotis,  and  its  pursuit  a  duiy,  could 
never  have  grown  up  or  become  a  dogma.  In  a  world 
like  thatf  our  duty  would  he  to  shun  truth,  rather.^* 
{"  Pragmatism,"  p.  75.) 


Vital  Benefits 

That  dedication  has  returned  to  my  mind  in  connec- 
tion with  this  quotation,  because  in  it  and  similar 
passages.  Pragmatism  puts  forward  its  claim  to  be 
"  an  old  way  of  thinking,"  and  gets  consecrated  as 
utiKtarianism,  sub  invocatione  J.  S.  Mill. 

That  truth  is  "  good,"  meaning  thereby  "  useful," 
for  life,  is  indeed  the  utihtarian  explanation  for  the 
"  current  notion  that  truth  is  divine  and  precious,  and 
its  pursuit  a  duty,"  because  being  "  good  for  life," 
life  of  the  individual  or  hfe  of  the  race,  is  the  utilitarian 
explanation  of  all  habitual  standards  of  value ;  and 
more  than  ever  since  utihtarianism  has  been  fortified 
by  the  evolutional  conception  that  the  survival  of  the 
races  best  fitted  for  life  imphes  the  survival  of  the 
habits  and  standards  most  useful  to  Ufe.  From  the 
utilitarian  standpoint,  "  good  for  life  "  explains  why 
we  cultivate  righteousness,  beauty,  health,  wealth, 
and,  in  the  present  case,  why  we  cultivate  truth. 
Utihtarianism  goes  further :    just  as  it  explains  in 


? 


\ 


what  manner  righteousness,  health,  wealth  (and 
attempts  to  explain,  as  yet  not  very  successfully, 
how  beauty)  are  each  and  all  "  good  for  life,"  so  it 
explains  also  the  particular  service  which  truth  renders 
that  master-exploiter.  Life.  Truth  is  good  or  useful 
for  hfe,  because  hfe  impUes  a  constant  adaptation  to 
really  existing  circumstances,  and  because  such  adapta- 
tion is  more  easy  and  complete  when  the  people  who 
do  the  adapting  believe  those  circumstances  to  be 
what  they  are  rather  than  what  they  are  not ;  to 
have  a  true  opinion  of  anything  is  to  save  that  overdue 
knowledge  of  reahty  which  spells  successively  surprise, 
waste  of  effort,  failurej  ruin.  That  is  why  truth  is 
useful  for  hfe,  and,  being  useful,  ought  to  be  culti- 
vated. So  far  we  have  learned  that  it  is  good  for 
life  to  beheve  in  opinions  which  are  true.  We  still 
require  to  learn  what  information  is  added  by  Professor 
James's  variation  on  this  utihtarian  formula,  namely, 
"  tru^  is  the  name  of  whatever  proves  itself  to  he  good 
in  the  way  of  helief,  and  good  too,  for  definite,  assignable 
reasons." 

This  formula  requires  interpretation,  for  it  can  be 
interpreted  in  two  ways,  according  to  the  reference 
of  the  words  "  good  in  the  way  of  behef."  "  Good 
in  the  way  of  beUef  "  may  mean  either :  first,  that 
the  content,  of  a  given  opinion,  its  subject  matter, 
is  such  that  behef  in  that  opinion  will  have  good 
results ;    or,  second,  that  the  content,  the  subject 


{ 


mAV.nrV3S'''^"-rr:r:f»'^ 


72 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth? 


matter  of  an  opinion,  is  in  a  peculiar  relation,  called 
truth,    to    something   independent    of    that    opinion, 
namely,  reahty  ;  and  that  being  in  this  truthful  relation 
to  reahty,  the  holding  of  this  opinion  is  hkely  to  have 
good  results.     The  difference  between  the  two  inter- 
pretations  depends   upon   whether   the  good   results 
are  expected  from  the  content  of  the  opinion,  or  from 
the  fact  of  the  opinion  being  correct ;  and  the  difference 
can  be  tested  practically  by  asking.  Why  ?    Thus  :  it  is 
good  to  beheve  that  water  tends  to  regain  its  level. 
Why  is  it  good  to  beheve  this  ?     Because  the  behef 
is  true,  and  holding  it  will  enable  us  to  deal  better 
with  water  than  holding  the  contrary  behef,  which 
is  false.     On  the  other  hand ;    it  is  good  to  beheve 
that  wicked  people  will  be  punished  in  hell.     Why  is  it 
good  to  beheve  this  ?    Because  it  makes  people  less 
inchned  to  be  wicked. 

Again  :  it  was  good  for  primitive  man  to  beheve  in 
the  regularity  of  the  seasons,  and  of  day  and  night. 
Why  was  it  good  ?  Because,  being  true,  this  behef 
enabled  savages  to  take  precautions  against  wild 
beasts  and  famine  and  cold,  and  consequently  to 
remain  ahve.  But :  it  was  good  for  primitive  man 
to  beheve  that  dead  ancestors  required  to  be  fed  and 
honoured.  Why  was  it  good?  Because  it  induced 
savages  to  bring  up  their  offspring  instead  of  letting 
it  perish.  But  although  it  was  useful  to  hold  that 
opinion,  the  opinion  was  false. 


k 


} 


\ 


i 


/ 


73 


Now  it  seems  evident  that  Professor  James  cannot 
mean  that  "  true "  can  ever  be  the  name  for  an 
opinion  which  is  false.  We  must  therefore  discard 
our  first  interpretation,  the  interpretation  according 
to  which  the  utihty  to  be  inquired  about  resides  in 
the  content  of  the  opinion,  independent  of  its  truth, 
and  fall  back  upon  the  second  interpretation,  according 
to  which  the  utihty  in  question  resides  not  in  the 
content  of  the  opinion  as  such,  but  in  the  fact  that 
this  content  happens  to  be  true.  "  True,"  therefore, 
we  may  paraphrase,  is  the  name  for  "  whatever  is 
good  in  the  way  of  behef  because  it  is  true."  This  is 
irrefutable,  but  somewhat  jejune.  Professor  James's 
contribution  to  the  subject  must  therefore  he  in  the 
qualifying  half -sentence,  "  and  good,  too,  for  definite, 
assignable  reasons. ^^ 

Well,  to  say  that  an  opinion  is  true  because  it  is 
good  for  us  on  account  of  its  truth,  is  a  definite  reason, 
but  scarcely  an  assignable  one.  There  must  be  more 
than  that  in  Professor  James's  thought ;  and  so,  of 
course,  there  is.  Continuing  that  page,  I  come  to  this  : 
'*  //  there  he  any  life  that  it  is  really  better  we  should 
lead,  and  if  there  be  any  idea  which,  if  believed  in,  would 
help  iw  to  lead  that  life,  then  it  would  be  really  better  for 
U8  to  believe  in  that  idea,  unless,  indeed,  belief  in  it 
incidentally  clashed  with  other  greater  vital  benefits. ^^ 

Can  this  be  the  "  definite,  assignable  "  reason  for 
finding  an  opinion  good  to  beheve  and  therefore  true  ? 


4 


74 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth? 


75 


Be  of  good  cheer ;  Pragmatism  is  sprung  from  utili- 
tarianism, and  is  fertile  in  useful  opinions.  "  Unless,'' 
writes  Professor  James,  carefully  reiterating  his  own 
statement,  "  unless  the  belief  incidentally  clashes  with 
some  other  vital  benefit.''  "Now  [it  is  always  Pro- 
fessor James  speaking],  in  real  life  what  vital  benefits 
is  any  particular  belief  of  ours  most  liable  to  clash  with  ? 
What  indeed  except  the  vital  benefits  yielded  by  other 
beliefs  when  these  prove  incompatible  with  the  first 
ones  ?  " 

Let  me  try  and  foUow  :   Here  is  a  vitally  beneficial 
belief.    It    clashes    with    another    vitally    beneficial 
behef,  and  is  therefore  proved  not  to  be  good  in  the 
way  of  behef— that  is,  not  to  be  true.     Was  the  vitally 
beneficial  behef  not  truly  vitaUy  beneficial  ?     Or  was 
it  only  less  vitaUy  beneficial  than  the  one  which  it 
clashed  with  ?     Or-this  is  a  different  supposition- 
was   the   vitaUy   beneficial   behef   which   succumbed 
in    the    clashing    reaUy  as  vitally  beneficial   as    the 
vitaUy    beneficial    behef   which    got   the    better   in 
the  clashing,  and  did  it  succumb  in  the  clashing,  be- 
cause the   other  vitaUy  beneficial   opinion,  although 
not  more  vitaUy  beneficial  than  itself,  was  also  true  ? 
But  then,  being  true  would  no  longer  be  the  same 
as    being   vitaUy   beneficial.     Ah,    here    I    have   it. 
The   vitaUy    beneficial    behef   is    true  when   it  does 
not    clash    with    another    vitaUy   beneficial    behef. 
With  another  behef  which  is  vitaUy  beneficial  because 


V 


it  is  true?  No— and  yes,  for  Professor  James  has 
told  us  that  useful  because  it  is  true  and  true 
because  it  is  useful  have  the  same  meaning.  In  the 
present  case,  however,  not  so  much  vitaUy  beneficial 
because  it  is  true,  but  rather  true  because  it  is  vitaUy 
beneficial. 

Anyhow,  if  a  vitaUy  beneficial  behef  does  not  clash 
with  another  vitaUy  beneficial  behef,  either  or  both 
(for  we  must  not  make  too  sure)  of  the  vitaUy  beneficial 
behefs  may  be  true.  That  is  simple  enough.  But 
suppose  two  vitaUy  beneficial  behefs  do  clash ;  which 
is  the  reaUy  vitaUy  beneficial  one  of  the  two  ?  The 
one,  evidently,  which  gets  the  better  in  the  clashing. 
But  why  wiU  it  get  the  better  in  the  clashing  ?  Because 
— why  because  it  is  true,  and  the  true  is  the  vitaUy 
beneficial. 

But  how  about  that  matter  of  ancestor  cultus  ?  I 
mean  the  behef  (typical  of  many  sinular  ones,  of 
which  more  anon)  that  deceased  parents  and  guardians 
required  to  be  fed  and  honoured  by  survivors,  a  behef 
most  beneficial  to  our  remote  forebears  and  ourselves 
by  inducing  primeval  persons  to  cumber  themselves 
with  otherwise  embarrassing  offspring  ?  ShaU  we  say 
that  as  that  opinion  was  not  true  it  could  not  have 
been  beneficial  (and  set  out  to  prove  that  it  was  never 
held  or  never  useful)  ?  Or  shaU  we  say  that  if  it  was 
beneficial  it  was,  in  so  far  .  .  . 


76 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth  ? 


n 


VI 

At  this  juncture  it  happened  very  luckily  that  my 
Pragmatist  friend  came  in  to  teU  me  that  reflection 
had  convinced  him  that  I  was  akeady  a  Pragmatist 
without  knowing  it.        So,  feeling  my  mind  giving 
way  under  this  logical  strain,  I  read  the  quotations  to 
him  and  begged  him  to  settle  the  difficulty.     "  With 
the  greatest  pleasure  in  the  world,"  he  answered,  and 
began  as  foUows  :    "  You  see,"  he  said,   "  ancestor 
worship  perhaps  never  reaUy  existed  at  aU— I  can 
lend  you  a  very  revolutionary  book  against  it  by  an 
Austrian  Jew.     Oh,  no,  pray  don't  think  that  I  mean 
to  deny  the  existence  of  ancestor  worship.    Not  in 
the  least-only  it  may  aU  be  a  mistake.     One  advan- 
age  of  Pragmatism,  as  you  will  soon  find  out,  is  that 
as  the  young  Florentine  Papini  said  (and  Professor 
James  thought  it  so  first-rate  that  he  repeated   it 
verbatim).  Pragmatism  is  a  corridor  with  rooms  off 
It  where  people  are  saying  prayers  to  different  gods 
and  wntmg  treatises  against  one  another.     But  to 
ret^  to  your  difficulty.     Supposing  ancestor  worship 
to  have  existed  (and  perhaps  it  hasn't),  you  may  be 
sure  that  it  was  beneficial  only  so  long  as  it  was  held 
and  it  was  held  so  long  as  did  not  clash  with  some 
other  beneficial  behef.    Not  the  most  virulent  Anti- 
Pragmatist  could  pretend  that  a  behef  can  be  beneficial 


I 


if  it  is  not  held !  The  whole  matter  (goes  on  my 
Pragmatist)  pivots  upon  the  fact  of  not  clashing  with 
other  truths  :  so  long  as  a  truth — a  beneficial  truth, 
of  course — does  not  clash  with  other  truths — that  is 
to  say  with  other  beneficial,  that  is  to  say  true,  behefs 
—why,  so  long  it  is  a  truth.  And  when  it  has  been 
knocked  into  cocked  hats  by  another  truth  in  the 
clash  we  have  been  speaking  of— why,  it  ceases  to  be 
altogether  and  therefore  ceases  to  be  a  truth.  Can 
something  be  true  if  it  has  ceased  to  be  ?  " 

Anti-Pragmatist.  Do  you  mean  (a  sudden  Ught 
dawning  in  my  mind)  that  a  dead  truth  becomes  a 
living  falsehood  or  error  ? 

Pragmatist.  Good !  as  Polonius  says,  that 
"  Uving  falsehood  or  error "  is  good,  though  it  is 
perhaps  pushing  things  a  httle  far;  that  belief  of 
ancestor  cultus,  for  instance,  is  evidently  false.  No 
one  can  say  that  it  isn't  as  dead  as  a  door-nail,  and 
quite  useless  in  modern  fife. 

Anti-Pragmatist.    But  then— do  truths  die  ? 

Pragmatist.  Let  me  answer  you  in  the  words  of 
Professor  James :  "  the  greatest  enemy  of  any  one  of 
our  truths  may  he  the  rest  of  our  truths. "^^ 

But  my  Pragmatist,  having  gone  away,  as  usual 
exulting,  after  contributing  thus  much  to  my  under- 
standing of  the  very  pragmatistic  answer  to  "  What  is 
truth  ?  ",  returned  the  very  next  minute  and  added 
this  further  information. 


fl 


ii 


78 


Vital  Lies 


Pragmatist.    Don't  imagine  from  what  I  have  been 
saying  that  pragmatistic  truths  are  always  each  other's 
enemies.     Quite  the  contrary  ;  one  of  the  chief  merits 
of  Pragmatism  (all  that  matter  of  Signor  Papini's 
corridor  ought  to  prove  it)  is  precisely  that  it  saves 
such  a  lot  of  all  that  destructive  clashing  of  truths. 
Truths  which  would  hit  up  against  each  other  in  any 
other  philosophical  system,  all  live  quite  peaceably 
side  by  side  in  Pragmatism,  because  of  its  great  principle 
of  80-far-forth. 
Anti-Pragmatist.    "  So-far-forth  ?  " 
Pragmatist.    What,     hadn't     you     grasped     the 
principle  of  "  true-in-so-far-forth  "  ?    It's  Hke  rules 
of  precedence;    it  decides  what  place  a  truth  is  to 
occupy,  and,  as  in  precedence,  there's  room  for  all 
truths— only  it's  better  than  ordinary  rules  of  pre- 
cedence, because  the  place  need  not  necessarily  be 
the  same,  so  that  the  truth  which  goes  in  first  to 
dinner  in  your  house,  may  sit  below  the  salt  in  mine, 
and   all   quite   peaceably   and   poHtely.     You   really 
must  study  that  principle  of   "so-far-forth."    You 
will  find  it  discussed  in  James's  "Pragmatism"  at 
page  73  and  thereabouts,  for  it  comes  in,  of  course, 
pretty  often.     I  can  scarcely  imagine  how  you  can 
have  missed  it.    And  once  you've  grasped  it  thoroughly, 
you  will  have  the  key  to  all  your  difficulties  about 
truths  clashing  and  being  enemies  and  so  forth;  in 
fact—for  that's  what's  so  splendid  about  Pragmatism— 


i 


What  is  Truth? 


79 


you  will  probably  recognize  that  you  have  thought 
it  all  along  yourself,  hke  Milton's  Fallen  Angels,  who 
recognized  that  they  would  all  have  invented  artillery 
as  soon  as  Satan  had  once  invented  it.  Meanwhile, 
I  will  go  home  and  mark  you  some  passages  in  another 
book  of  Professor  James's — just  to  see  the  importance 
of  it  all  "  for  knowledge,"  as  he  says.  I  don't  see  the 
book  here  upon  your  table — so  I'll  send  it.  It's  the 
"  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience." 

Anti-Pragmatist  (a  Ught  dawning).  Oh,  is  that 
perhaps  the  "  experience  "  in  which  we  must  seek  for 
the  "  cash-value  "  of  truth  ? 

While  waiting  for  my  friend  the  Pragmatist  to  bring 
his  copy  of  the  "  Varieties  of  Rehgious  Experience,  "  I 
set  to  turning  over  the  pages  of  Professor  James's 
"  Pragmatism,"  wondering  whether  I  should  be  able 
to  recover,  among  all  those  definitions  of  truth,  a 
sentence  which  was  knocking  at  the  door  of  my 
memory,  of  which  that  title,  "  Rehgious  Experience,'* 
had  somehow  evoked  a  vague  shadow.  And  by  the 
greatest  good  luck,  there  it  stood  on  the  very  page 
(namely  73)  at  which  I  opened  the  book  : 

"  Now  pragmatism,  devoted  though  she  be  to  facts, 
has  no  such  materiahstic  bias.  .  .  .  If  theological 
ideas  prove  to  hive  a  value  for  concrete  life,  they  will  he 
true  for  Pragmatism,  in  the  sense  of  being  good  for  so 
much.'''* 

As  if  foreseeing  their  immense  value,  not  merely 


1    ; 


Pi 


8o 


Vital  Lies 


in  helping  me  to  define  truth,  but  in  guiding  me  among 
the  Varieties  of  ReUgious  Experience,  Professor  James 
has  actually  underlined  that  sentence  himself. 


VII 

Sub  Invocatione 
John  Stuart  Mill 

Improving  upon  my  Pragmatist's  advice,  I  decided 
to  put  off  my  inquiry  into  the  principle  of  true-in-so- 
far- forth  until  I  could  find  it  illLstrated  in  that  other 
book  of  Professor  James's,  a  book,  I  should  add,  which 
I  had  read  with  very  great  admiration  and  enjoyment 
a  few  years  back,  but  before  I  had  turned  my  thoughts 
to  Pragmatism. 

While  waiting,  therefore,  for  his  copy  of  the  "Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience,"  and  for  whatever  notes  he 
might  obligingly  add  to  it,  I  refreshed  my  somewhat 
wearied  mind  by  going  to  the  window  and  gazing 
blankly  at  the  starry  heavens,  whose  direct  influence 
upon  births,  deaths,  and  marriages,  had  been  one 
of  those  truths  which,  after  practically  guiding  man- 
kind for  many  centuries,  had  eventually  gone  under 
in  a  clash,  with  what  we  at  present  call  the  truths 
of  astronomy. 

While  thus  idling  I  found  my  mind  haunted,  as 


What  is  Truth? 


8i 


one  is  haunted  by  musical  phrases,  by  that  dedica- 
tion of  "  Pragmatism  "  to  John  Stuart  Mill,  who  had 
taught  Professor  James  the  "  Pragmatic  openness  of 
mind.^^ 

John  Stuart  Mill  (thus  idled  my  thoughts)  was 
not  only  a  utihtarian,  but  also  an  economist. 
And,  being  an  economist,  I  can  imagine  him  applying 
to  the  question :  "  Why  do  we  prize  truth,"  the 
economic  formula  of  supply  and  demand,  in  the 
following  fashion  : 

The  fact  that  we  prize  truth  and  try  to  tempt  people 
to  pursue  it,  shows  that  the  demand  for  it  is  greater 
than  the  supply.  We  may  risk  the  supposition  that 
the  soil  in  which  it  can  be  cultivated  is  Hmited,  and 
that  the  cultivation  involves  some  hardship ;  also 
that  there  are  perhaps  special  causes  of  chmate  and  so 
forth  which  threaten  its  successful  production.  At 
all  events,  it  would  seem  certain,  judging  by  the  high 
estimation  it  is  held  in,  that  truth  is  not  one  of  those 
commodities  like  plain  sewing  or  Hterature  (see 
John  Stuart  Mill's  "  PoHtical  Economy  ")  which  are 
notoriously  produced  by  any  person  without  special 
endowment  or  training,  and  therefore  glut  the 
market. 

Nor  is  this  all— it  is  the  Economist  speaking  in  my 
imagination — the  insufficient  supply  of  truth  com- 
pared with  the  great  demand  for  it,  makes  it  extremely 
probable  that,  like  other  necessaries  of  human  existence 


82 


Vital  Lies 


wliich  are  similarly  economically  situated,  truth  will 
tend  to  be  adulterated  and  fraudulently  imitated. 
Adulteration  consists  in  adding  to  a  certain  amount 
a  greater  or  lesser  amount  of  fallacy  or  of  nonsense. 
Falsification,  I  take  it,  is  the  apphcation  to  given 
opinions  of  labels  or  names  such  as  lead  people  to 
suppose  that  they  are  identical  with  other  opinions 
which  have  passed  muster  or  enjoy  a  good  reputation. 


VIII 

True-in-so-far-forth 

When,  however,  the  next  morning  had  come  without 
the  promised  volume  making  its  appearance,  I  yielded 
to  curiosity  on  the  subject  of  true-in-so-far-forth,  and 
turned  to  the  pages  of  "  Pragmatism  "  which  had  been 
pointed  out  to  me,  and  in  which  I  did  indeed,  as  my 
Pragmatist  had  assured  me,  find  some  very  interest- 
ing elucidations  of  Professor  James's  phrase :  "  A 
value  for  concrete  life^ 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  a  long  discussion  of  the  Absolute 
of  Transcendental  Ideahsm,  a  form  of  philosophy  which 
Professor  James  seems  to  find  almost  as  dull  as  I  am 
ashamed  to  confess  I  do  myself.  The  sentence  my 
eye  fell  upon  was  a  perfect  instance  of  that  concihating 
rule  of  precedence  which  my  Pragmatist  had  said  I 
should   find   in   the   principle   of   true-in-so-far-forth. 


What  is  Truth? 


83 


For  this  is  what  I  read  about  that  (to  Professor  James 
and  my  humble  self)  singularly  uninviting.  Absolute  : 

*'  First  I  called  it  rmtjestic,  and  said  it  yielded  religious 
comfort  to  a  cUiss  of  minds  .  .  ,  In  so  far  .  .  .''  (Here 
was  the  principle  !)  "  In  so  far  as  it  affords  such  com- 
fort .  ,  .  ii  performs  a  concrete  function.  As  a  good 
Pragmatist,  I  myself  ought  to  call  the  Absolute  '  true  in  so 
far  forth  '  then ;  and  I  unhesitatingly  now  do  so.  But 
what  does  true-in-so-far-forth  mean  in  this  case  ?  What 
do  believers  in  the  Absolute  mean  by  saying  that  their 
belief  affords  them  comfort  ?  They  mean  that  since,  in 
the  Absolute,  finite  evil  is  '  overruled '  already,  we  may, 
therefore,  whenever  we  wish,  treat  the  temporal  as  if  it 
were  potentially  the  eternal,  be  sure  that  we  can  trust 
its  outcome,  and  without  sin,  dismiss  our  fear  and  drop 
the  worry  of  our  finite  responsibility.  In  short,  they 
mean  that  we  hive  a  right  ever  and  anon  to  take  a  moral 
holiday,  to  let  the  world  wag  in  its  own  way,  feeling  that 
its  issues  are  in  better  hands  than  ours  and  are  none  of 
our  business.''^ 

Let  us  grasp  this  much  :  Professor  James  is  investi- 
gating the  concrete  function  of  this  idea  of  the  Absolute. 
But  instead  of  beginning  his  inquiry  with  the  sentence  : 
"  What  do  beUevers  in  the  Absolute  mean  by  saying 
that  their  behef  affords  them  comfort  ?  "  he  leads  off 
with  "  WTiat  does  '  true-in-so-far-forth '  mean  in  this 
case  ?  "  thus  identifying  truth  once  more,  not  only 
with  concrete  function,  but  with  "  giving  comfort," 


84 


Vital  Lies 


so  that  there  remains  the  result :  An  idea  which  gives 
comfort  is  true  so-far-forth. 

"  My  belief  in  the  Absolute"  goes  on  Professor  James, 
"  based  on  the  good  it  does  me,  must  run  the  gauntlet  of 
my  other  beliefs.  Grant  that  it  may  be  true  in  giving 
me  a  moral  holiday.  Nevertheless,  as  I  conceive  it — 
arut  let  me  speak  now  confidentially j  as  it  were,  and  merely 
in  my  own  private  person — it  clashes  with  other  truths 
of  mine  whose  benefits  I  hate  to  give  up  on  its  account. 
It  happens  to  be  associated  with  a  kind  of  logic  of  which 
I  am  the  enemy ,  I  find  that  it  entangles  me  in  meta- 
physical paradoxes  that  are  inacceptable,  etc.,  etc.  Bui 
as  I  have  enough  trouble  in  life  already  without  adding 
these  intellectual  inconsistencies,  I  personally  give  up 
the  Absolute.  If  I  could  restrict  my  notion  of  the  Absolute 
to  its  bare  holiday  giving  value,  it  wouldnH  clash  with 
my  beliefs.  But  we  cannot  easily  thus  restrict  our  hypo- 
thesis. They  carry  supernumerary  features,  and  these  it 
is  that  dash  so." 

Now  let  me  see  whether  I  follow : 

The  other  truth  which  restricted  the  so-far-forth 
truth  of  the  Absolute  of  Transcendental  Idealism  is 
not  merely  negative  in  action,  it  does  not  merely  con- 
sist in  other  "  clashing  truths."  That  truth  which 
80-far-forths  the  truth  of  the  Absolute,  partly  consists 
in  the  greater  attractiveness  and  practical  advantage 
of  a  particular  scheme  of  the  Universe  which  Pro- 
fessor  James   commends   to   oui   favourable   notice 


What  is  Truth  ? 


8S 


("  exactly  what  you  require,"  "  Pragmatism,"  p.  301) 
in  all  of  his  pragmatistic  volumes.  ^ 

Let  me  see  again  whether  I  have  really  grasped  the 
meaning  of  that  Umiting  quahfication  "  so-far-forth." 
A  thing  being  true-so-far-forth  means  that  it  may  be 
untrue  in  some  particular  different  from  the  one  under 
examination,  for  instance :  "  Your  statement  that 
last  Wednesday  was  a  rainy  day  is  true  in  so  far  forth 
as  there  was  rain  from  eight  to  twelve ;  the  same 
statement  was  untrue  in  so  far  forth  that  on  that 
same  Wednesday  there  was  no  rain  from  twelve  to 
eight."  Let  us  apply  this  analogy  to  Professor  James's 
explanation  of  that  Umiting  so-far-forth  which  he  put 
to  the  truth  of  the  idea  of  the  Absolute  of  Transcen- 
dental Ideahsm.  As  the  truth  of  Wednesday  having 
been  a  rainy  day  was  restricted  by  the  truth  of  no 

*  Professor  James  reverts  to  this  so-far-forth  truth  of  the 
"  melioristic  "  or  "  pluralistic  "  view  compared  with  that  of  the 
Absolute"  on  p.  295. 

"  May  not  religious  optimism  be  too  idyllic  ?  Mv^t  all  be  saved  ? 
Is  no  price  to  be  paid  in  the  vx)rk  of  salvation  ?  Is  the  last  word 
sweet  ?  Is  all  '  yes,  yes  '  in  the  Universe  ?  Doesn't  the  fact  of 
'  No  '  stand  at  the  very  core  of  life,  etc.  ?  I  cannot  speak  officially 
as  a  Pragmatist  here ;  all  I  can  say  is  that  my  own  Pragmatism 
offers  no  objection  to  my  taking  sides  with  this  more  moralistic 
view,  and  giving  up  the  claim  of  total  reconciliation.  The  possi- 
bility  of  this  is  involved  in  the  pragmatistic  willingness  to  treat 
pluralism  as  a  serious  hypothesis.  In  the  end,  it  is  our  faith  and 
not  our  logic  that  decides  such  questions,  and  I  deny  the  right  of 
any  pretended  logic  to  veto  my  own  faith.  I  find  myself  willing 
to  take  the  universe  to  be  really  dangerous  and  adventurous,  with- 
out therefore  backing  out  and  crying  '  no  play.'  " 


86 


Vital  Lies 


rain  having  fallen  after  twelve  o'clock,  so  the  truth 
of  the  "Absolute"  is  restricted  ("  so-far-forthed ") 
by  the  *'  benefits  '*  which  Professor  James  derives 
from  certain  other  truths  of  an  incompatible 
nature. 

Here,  therefore,  we  have  two  "truths,"  of  which 
one  restricts  (so-far-forths)  and  the  other  is  restricted 
(so-far-forthed).  The  so-far-forthing  truth  is  the  one 
labelled  Pluralistic  Universe,  the  so-far-forthed  is  the 
one  labelled  the  Absolute ;  both  are  true  in-so-far- 
forth  they  bring  comfort ;  only  the  greater  truths 
bring,  of  course,  more  comfort.  But  the  matter  of 
80-far-forth  by  no  means  ends  here.  One  of  these 
truths,  the  so-far-forthed  truth  labelled  "  the  Absolute  " 
inspires  reliance  upon  .  .  .  well,  on  the  "  Absolute,"  ; 
the  other  truth,  the  so-far-forthing,  labelled  "  Plural- 
istic Universe "  inspires  reliance  on  oneself.  Now 
observe  how  this  compUcates  the  nice  question  of  the 
precedence  (as  the  fact  of  intermarriage  with  royalty 
does  that  of  earls  and  dukes)  of  these  undoubted  but 
by  no  means  equal  Truths  !  .  .  .  For  whereas  leUance 
on  something  else — on  the  already  existing  perfection 
of  the  Absolute,  or  the  Justice  of  Predestination — ^has 
a  tendency  to  leave  people  where  it  finds  them,  or 
even  to  make  them  fatalistic,  dull,  and  generally 
indifferent  and  quiescent,  in  fact,  to  impair  their 
faculties ;  confidence  in  themselves  has  been  known 
to  have  marvellous  effects  in  curing  hysteria,  jumping 


What  is  Truth? 


87 


f 


■ 


crevasses,  doing  unlikely  things  of  all  sorts — in  short, 
self-reUance,  we  all  know,  is  half  the  battle. 

Nay,  more — for  the  truth  labelled  Pluralistic  Uni- 
verse is  surely  only  the  truer  for  not  being  restricted 
or  so-far-forthed  by  the  useful,  comforting,  and  so-far- 
iorth-true  doctrine  of  orthodox  Christianity ;  nay, 
more — there  are  cases  where  reliance  on  something 
not  oneself  actually  tends  to  reaUze  its  own  contents ; 
at  least  in  a  negative  manner :  thus  our  belief  in 
Christ's  power  of  saving  souls  is  absolutely  indis- 
pensable (according  to  Catholics)  to  His  willingness 
to  save  us  if  we  do  our  part.  I  fear  somehow  that 
this  further  argument  in  favour  of  the  greater  truths 
of  "  a  Pluralistic  Universe "  will  not  commend  it 
either  to  those  who  believe  in  Catholicism  or  those 
who  beUeve  in  a  Pluralistic  Universe.  So  I  drop  it 
and  revert  to  my  simple  summing  up,  which  is  this  : 

If  we  add  to  the  "  truth  in  so  far  forth  as  comfort " 
the  "  truth  in  so  far  forth  a^  concrete  functions  of  making 
people  self-reliant  and  venturesome  and  strenuous  "  we 
shall  find  that,  although  "  The  Absolute  "  is  true,  it  is 
a  good  deal,  even  a  great  deal,  less  true  in  so-far-forth 
than  a  PluraHstic  Universe. 

I  wondered  whether  I  had  now  at  last  mastered  the 
principle  of  true-in-so-far-forth  sufficiently  to  use  it  as 
a  guide  in  the  volume  on  the  "  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experiences,"  which  my  friend  the  Pragmatist  had 
meanwhile  sent  me.    So,  to  make  assurance  doubly 


88 


Vital  Lies 


What  is  Truth? 


89 


sure,  I  turned  back  to  page  73  of  "  Pragmatism  "  and 
copied  out,  for  my  own  future  guidance,  the  following 
paragraph  : — 

"Now,  Pragmatism,  devoted  though  she  he  to  facts, 
his  no  such  m^Uerialistic  bias  as  ordinary  empiricism 
labours  under.    Moreover,  she  has  no  objection  whatever 
to  the  realising  of  abstractions,  so  long  as  you  get  about 
among  particulars  with  their  aid  and  they  actually  carry 
you  somewhere.    Interested  in  no  conclusions  but  those 
which  our  minds  and  our  experiences  work  out  together, 
she  has  no  a   priori   prejudices  against  theology.     If 
theological    ideas    prove    to    have    a  value  for  con- 
crete hfe,  they  will  be  true  for  Pragmatism,  in  the 
sense  of  being  good  for  so  much.    For  how  much 
more  they  are  true  will  depend  upon  their  relations 
to  the  other  truths  that  also  have  to  be  acknowledged." 
Almost  as  if    foreseeing  their  inmiense   value  in 
steering  me  among  the  "Varieties  of  Religious  Ex- 
periences," Professor  James  has   actually  taken   the 
trouble  to  underUne  the  first  two  sentences  of  the 
above  passage. 


IX 


A  httle  while  back,  my  last  day  in  Rome,  I  went 
for  a  few  minutes  into  St  Peter's.  It  was  hung  with 
crimson  and  smelt  (that  wonderful  vast  atmosphere 
such    that   no   crowds   can   exhaust   or   defile   it!) 


# 


7 


ii 


deUcious  of  incense.  There  had  been  some  papal 
ceremony ;  people  in  hired  veils  and  dress-clothes 
were  going  out,  women,  also,  wearing  the  Franciscan 
Third  Order's  smock  and  cape  in  curious  combination 
with  modern  hats.  And  before  the  Chapel  of  the 
Sacrament  a  whole  flock  of  little  girls  in  white  veils 
knelt  down,  looking  hke  a  swarm  of  pigeons,  and 
reminding  one  at  the  same  time  of  an  Eastern  market- 
place. A  woman,  with  a  child  at  her  breast,  kissed 
the  toe  of  the  bronze  St  Peter,  and  another  child 
whom  she  dragged  along  roared  to  be  lifted  up  and 
kiss  it  too.  The  curtains  of  the  apse  and  cupola  let 
in  an  apricot-coloured  light,  and  all  the  gold  shone, 
and  the  inscriptions  twice  or  thrice  a  man's  height 
gUttered  forth — gigantic  advertisements  of  the  unique 
quahty  of  the  rehgion  of  which  Jesus  was  sole  inventor 
and  Peter  ("  Tu  es  Petrus  et  super  banc  petram,"  etc.) 
sole  certified  retail  agent.  As  I  read  these  words 
the  Pragmatistic  formula  came  to  my  mind,  *'  True 
in  so  far  forth." 

True,  certainly,  if  we  measure  truth  by  yards  of 
masonry,  tons  of  marble,  and  hundredweights  of 
gilding,  and  all  the  human  feeling  and  wiUing  required 
to  move  and  spend  it  all.  The  building  of  such  a 
church  is  surely  a  fine  pragmatistic  object-lesson  ! 
But  looking  round  St  Peter's  one  realizes  also  how 
totally  such  considerations  have  nothing  to  do  with 
Truth.     Or  more  properly,  one  reahzes  that  the  true 


90 


Vital  Lies 


fact  for  which  St  Peter's  and  all  built  on  it  C  et  super 
hanc  sedificabo,"  etc.)  stands,  is  this:  that  where 
mistakes,  fallacies,  and  Ues  are  more  comforting  and 
profitable  than  truth  as  such,  St  Peter's— material  or 
spiritual— will  be  built,  ornamented,  and  guarded, 
and  truth  be  left  outside  to  starve,  when  it  is 
not  hurried  out  of  existence  by  more  active  methods, 
as  that  day  when,  from  the  great  church's  steps,  you 
might  have  seen  the  flame-reddened  smoke  of  Bruno's 
faggots.     "  So-far-forth-true." 

But  here,  I  suppose,  the  so-far-forthness  stops,  and 
the  truths  of  Cathohcism  would  come  into  clashing 
coUision  with  other  truths— good  not  only  "for  so 
much,"  but  '*  good  for  so  much  more  "  in  the  eyes  of 
Professor  James. 


\ 


*\ 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  TRUTHS  OF  MYSTICISM 


I  DO  not  feel  sure  who  had  put  that  marker  into 
the  "  Varieties  of  ReHgious  Experience,"  and 
it  is  of  httle  consequence  whether  it  was  myself 
or  my  Pragmatist,  or,  indeed,  whether  such  a  Pragmatist 
ever  existed  outside  my  fancy.  Suffice  it  that  the 
sUp  was  inserted  at  page  413,  and  that  on  it  was  written 
"  Professor  James's  examination  of  the  message  of 
mysticism  from  the  point  of  view  of  "  true-in-so-far- 
forth." 

The  examination  in  question,  which  I  should  like  to 
analyse  from  the  point  of  view  of  true-without  any 
so-far-forth,  begins  with  the  following  remarks : — 

"  To  the  medical  mind  these  ecstasies  signify  nothing 
hut  suggestion  and  .  .  .  hypnotic  states^  on  an  intel- 
lectual basis  of  superstition^  and  a  corporeal  one  of  de- 
generation and  hysteria.  Undoubtedly  these  pathological 
conditions  have  existed  in  many  and  possibly  in  all  the 
cases,  but  that  fact  tells  us  nothing  about  the  value  for 
knowledge  of  the  cor^sdousness  which  they  induce.'''' 


91 


92 


Vital  Lies 


The  value  for  knowledge,  writes  Professor  James. 
And  so  far  as  knowledge  is  concerned,  I  agree  with 
him :   a  pathological  condition  may  or  might  be  such 
as  to  favour  the  acquisition  of  certain  sorts  of  facts, 
or  the  analysis  of  certain  others,  or  the  recognition, 
let  us  say  the  divination,  of  certain  relations,  of  what 
we  call  laws.    The  question  depends  upon  what  meaning 
we  attach  to  the  word  pathological.    It  is  quite  conceiv- 
able that  the  hyperacuity  of  a  given  faculty  may  co- 
incide with  a  bad  complexion  of  body,  or  even,  by 
defrauding  more  ordinary  functions,  lead  to  bodily 
deterioration  and  death  ;  and  may  we  go  so  far  as  to 
imagine  (psychiatry  of  the  Lombroso-Mobius,  etc.,  kind 
has  surely  developed  our  imagination  in  such  matters  !) 
that  hyperacuity  of  a  given  sort  may  produce  some 
particular  organic  poison,  or,  if  you  prefer,  may  re- 
quire as  a  lubricant,  so  to  speak,  some  secretion  which 
poisons  the  rest  of  the  organism.    In  all  these  cases 
we   may  say  that  the    hyperacuity  is   pathological, 
meaning   thereby   that  it  causes   or  coincides   with 
conditions  destructive  to  health,  individual  or  social. 
And  nevertheless    that   hyperacuity   may  attain    to 
knowledge   which   is   genuine   and   valuable,   indeed 
valuable   enough   to   make   the   cultivation   of  such 
pathological  conditions  not  only  legitimate  but  praise- 
worthy.   Lombroso  has  told  us  that  genitis  (and  even 
such   modest    approximation    thereto    as    he    found 
registered  in  the  biographical  dictionaries  whence  he 


■ra^^ 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  93 

culled  so  many  "  facts  ")  is  conditioned  by  epileptic 
and  even  less  pleasing  habits  of  body ;  yet  Lombroso 
himself  did  not  deny  that  such  epilepsy-bom  genius 
(let  us  say  his  own)  sees  through  many  millstones 
impenetrable  to  less  "  pathological "  analysis  and 
inference.  We  may  therefore  agree  with  Professor 
James  that  the  pathological  stigmata  of  mystics  do 
not  necessarily  mihtate  against  their  possession  of 
modes  of  knowing  incompatible  with  normal  life ; 
Professor  James's  comparison  of  the  mystic's  condi- 
tion with  that  produced  by  alcohol  or  ether  making 
the  notion  quite  intelligible  and  workaday. 

This  being  granted,  we  will  continue  where  we  left 
off: 

"  To  pass  a  spiritual  judgment  upon  these  states  we 
must  not  content  ourselves  with  superficial  medical  talk, 
but  inquire  into  their  fruits  for  .  .  .  {for  life.'') 

Exactly !  I  exclaimed  to  myself.  And  perhaps  I 
was  excusable  in  overlooking  or  misreading  that  last 
word,  and  thinking  that  we  were  still  talking  of  the 
value  for  knowledge  which,  in  the  earUer  part  of  his 
sentence.  Professor  James  had  so  judiciously  dis- 
entangled from  the  possible  physiological  morbidness 
of  those  mystical  states.  Excusable  or  not,  I  con- 
tinued the  chapter,  pencil  in  hand,  still  bent  upon  that 
value  for  knowledge  which,  as  Professor  James  had 
remarked  in  the  previous  sentence,  could  not  be  judged 
by  mere  reference  to  the  pathological  state  of  saintly 


1 1 


!  n 


94 


Vital  Lies 


it 


<t 


persons.  Such  being  the  case,  I  was  rather  surprised 
at  coming  immediately  upon  several  solid  pages  of 
quotations  from  the  chief  Spanish  mystics ;  and  still 
more  surprised  at  Professor  James's  summing  up  of 
the  evidence  they  contained.  "  Resolution  to  amend," 
Unworidliness  " — such  were  some  of  his  headings- 
Patience,"  **  Gentleness,"  "Enthusiasm,"  "Hero- 
ism," "  Indomitable  spirit  and  energy,"  "  The  develop- 
ment of  oneself  into  a  most  powerful  practical  human 
machine  "  (he  was  talking  of  Ignatius  Loyola). 

Very  fine  things,  no  doubt ;  but  why  should  the 
enumeration  of  such  moral  quaUties  shed  more  Ught 
upon  the  value  for  knowledge  of  those  mystical  con- 
ditions," than  the  "superficial  medical  talk"  about 
their  possible  pathological  origin,  which  Professor 
James  had  dismissed  as  irrelevant?  In  another 
minute,  however,  I  found  him  returning  to  that  ques- 
tion. "  Mystical  conditions,''  he  writes  (page  415)  in 
the  sentence  immediately  following  a  quotation  from 
Saint  Teresa,  "  mystical  conditions  may,  therefore, 
render  the  soul  more  energetic  in  the  lines  which  their 
irispiration  favours.  But  this  could  be  reckoned  an 
advantage  only  in  case  the  inspiration  were  a  true  one." 
(I  snatch  up  my  pencil  and  underline.  Here  we  are 
at  the  value  for  knowledge  !) 
"...  were  a  true  one." 

"  //  the  inspiration  u^ere  erroneous,  the  energy  uxmld 
he  aU  the  more  mistaken  and  misbegotten  " — 


K 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  95 

"  be  all  the  more  mistaken  ..." 

My  mind  is,  so  to  speak  (and  to  speak  in  the  language 
of  mystical  conditions)  transfixed  and  irradiated  by 
that  little  phrase  "  all  the  more.'^  .  .  ,  AU  the  more 
.  .  .  but  if  it  would,  under  certain  circumstances 
{i.e.  the  erroneousness  of  the  inspiration),  be  more  mis- 
taken and  misbegotten,  then  this  mystically  increased 
energy  must  already  have  been  mistaken  and  mis- 
begotten, even  if  the  inspiration  had  not  been 
erroneous :  how  can  anything  be  more  mistaken — 
let  alone  misbegotten — than  if  it  were  not  mistaken 
at  all  ?  All  the  more  ?  And  with  that  word  comes 
the  remembrance  of  an  axiom  in  a  famous  treatise 
of  logic.  "  It  is  easy,"  said  Alice,  "  to  have  more  than 
nothing."  It  must  similarly  be  easy  to  be  "  all  the  more 
mistaken  "  than  not  to  be  mistaken  at  all. 

In  the  present  case  it  is  /  who  have  been  mistaken, 
mistaken  in  supposing  that  Professor  James  would 
waste  his  time  in  enouncing  anything  so  crassly  obvi- 
ous as  that  the  value  for  knowledge  cf  the  energy 
devoted  to  its  service  depended  upon  whether,  so  to 
speak,  the  knowledge  was  knowledge.  Still  less 
would  he  have  thought  it  necessary  to  repeat  the 
truism  over  again.  No ;  this  is  not  a  valuation  of 
mystical  conditions  for  knowledge ;  or  rather  it  is, 
but  it  is  something  more.  In  the  Ught  of  the  prag- 
matistic  definition  of  truth,  I  may  add,  that  being 
something  more  than  a  valuation  for  knowledge,  it 


» 


96 


Vital  Lies 


is    all   the    more    a    valuation    for    knowledge.    That 
mysterious  "  all  the  more  "  has,  as  I  remarked,  pierced 
through  my  thick  truistic  thought  and  flooded  it  with 
comprehension  :   Professor  James  is  reckoning  up  all 
the    advantages    resulting    from    that    "  increment " 
spiritual    energy    produced    by    mystical    conditions, 
upon  whatever  Unes  (and  not  merely  hues  of  know- 
ledge) which  the  inspiration  favours.    What  makes 
me  certain  is  the  therefore  with  which  he  begins  the 
passage.     "Mystical    conditions    may    therefore"— 
follow  that   therefore   backwards    and    what   do    we 
find?     Why,  the  catalogue  (with  abundant  samples 
pinned  into  it)  of  all  the  various  virtues  and  practical 
excellences  which    the    mystics   attributed   to    their 
mystical  conditions.    "  The  lines  which  their  inspiration 
favours  "  are  therefore  (and  on  account  of  a  therefore) 
no  mere  hnes,  of  knowledge,  but  lines  also,  indeed 
chiefly,  of  moral  improvement  and  disinterested,  yet 
sagacious,  conduct.    And,  so  far  from  enouncing  a 
truism,  here  is  Professor  James  deciding,  and  repeat- 
ing his  decision,  that  if  the  inspiration  alleged  in  the 
mystical   condition    happened    to    be    erroneous,    all 
these  virtues,  all  this  practical  sagacity,  all  this  spiritual 
energy  would  be  mistaken  and  misbegotten. 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  97 


II 


I  beUeve  that  in  Witch  Trials  a  distinction  was 
sometimes   found   necessary   between   an   inspiraiion 
true  in  the  sense  of  truly  coming  from  its  alleged  author, 
and  an  inspiration  tru£  in  the  sense  of  conveying  true 
information,    and    Professor    James's    dealings    with 
mediums  have  perhaps  resulted  in  similar  distinctions 
between  the  truth  of  the  facts  purporting  to  he  conveyed 
by  spirits  and  the  truth  of  those  facts  having  been  con- 
veyed by  spirits.     But  as  we  are  dealing  with  revelations 
which  are  supposed  to  come,  not  from  devils  or  the 
low-class  deceased,  but  from  the  Well  Head  of  Truth 
and  from  Veracity  personified,  I  think  we  may  identify 
truth  of  the  information  conveyed  by  mystix^  inspiration, 
with  truth  about  the  origin  of  that  inspiration.    And  we 
thus  get  the  following  paraphrase  of  Professor  James's 
sentence :    Whatever   value,   for  other  concerns  than 
knowledge,  there  may  be  in  the  increment  to  spiritual 
energy  induced  by  mystical  conditions,  their  value  for 
knowledge   depends   entirely   upon   whether   the   in- 
spiration  alleged  by   those  mystical  states,  and  the 
items  communicated  by  that  inspiration,  happen  or 
not  to  be  what  the  mystic  alleges  that  they  are.     And, 
as  regards  the  energy,  which  the  mystical  conditions 
have  increased,  why,  that  increase  of  energy  will  be 
of  value  to  knowledge,  in  case  the  inspiration  be  true. 


98 


Vital  Lies 


ii 


and  of  detriment  to  knowledge  in  case  the  inspiration 
be  false.  But  Professor  James  does  not  seem  satisfied 
with  this  theory  that  if  the  inspiration  is  erroneous, 
the  increase  of  spiritual  energy  put  to  its  service 
cannot  be  "  reckoned  an  advantage  "  to  knowledge. 
"If  the  inspiration  were  erroneous,"  he  concludes 
vehemently,  "  the  energy  would  be  aU  the  more  mis- 
taken and  misbegotten."  More  mistaken?  More 
misbegotten  ?    Is  that  not  saying  a  Httle  too  much  ? 


Ill 

Well,  Pragmatists  are  specialists  in  Truth ;  and  of 
course  speciahsts  are  apt  to  become  puristic  and  over- 
exclusive.  Not  being  a  Pragmatist  I  should  not 
have  made  so  sure  that  aU  those  virtues  inventorized 
above,  and  a  great  many  more  with  which  this  volume 
deals,  must  have  been  "mistaken  and  misbegotten" 
(let  alone  "  all  the  more  mistaken  and  misbegotten  ") 
in  the  event  of  their  inspiration  being  not  "  true " 
at  all,  but  thoroughly  "  mistaken." 

The  inspiration  both  of  Moses  (if  there  was  a  Moses  !) 
and  of  Jesus,  are  to  my  thinking  quite  "  mistaken," 
yet  I  would  never  venture  to  assert  that  the  Com- 
mandments and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  were  "  mis- 
begotten." Or  indeed  otherwise  than  incalculably 
valuable  for  human  edification  and  conduct.    History 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  99 

strikes  me  as  showing  many  examples  of  fortunate 
fallacies  and  beneficent  misapprehensions,  and  I 
have  noticed  more  than  once  in  private  fife  the  en- 
nobUng  influence  of  friends  and  teachers  whose  nobihty 
was  mostly  of  our  own  imagining.  Indeed  this  very 
volume  will  show  that  I  am  inchned  to  accept  that 
view  of  modem  anthropological  sociology  (especially 
Mr  Ernest  Crawley's),  according  to  which  the  most 
foolish  and  basest  mythological  muddles  of  our  savage 
forefathers  helped  not  only  to  suggest  and  sanction 
enduring  moral  rules,  but  also  to  evolve  and  estabhsh 
habitual  deference  to  unscrutinized  moral  standards. 
Nay  more,  as  my  Reader  will  learn  still  further  on, 
I  think  there  is  a  partial  scientific  truth  in  Monsieur 
Georges  Sorel's  theory,  that  sweeping  moral  results 
are  best  obtained  by  myths,  just  because  it  is  a  myth's 
essence  never  to  come  true.  But  then,  you  see,  I  do 
not  hold  with  Professor  James's  and  Mr  Schiller's 
Pragmatism  that  we  can  test  truth  by  asking  our- 
selves "what  it  would  be  better  to  beheve."  And 
among  the  truths  which,  because  they  are  true,  I  am 
willing  to  look  in  the  face  despite  their  being  perhaps 
not  very  good  to  beheve  or  at  least  to  proclaim,  is 
precisely  this  truth :  that  fallacies,  mistakes,  nay 
falsehoods,  may  sometimes  have  remarkably  hfe- 
preserving  and  life-improving  effects,  in  other  words 
that  there  exists,  alongside  of  vital  truths^  a  by  no 
means  neghgible  category  of  vital  lies. 


lOO 


Vital  Lies 


So  much  for  me.  On  the  contrary  a  Pragmatist  is, 
as  already  hinted,  a  speciaKst  in  truth,  and  his  rather 
professional  exclusivism  has  no  use  either  for  Plato's 
Noble  ^  Ues  or  for  Ibsen's  Vital  ones.  The  question 
which  busies  him  is.  What  is  Truth  ?  Quite  consonantly 
with  this,  and  after  those  difficult  sentences  making 
the  value  of  mystical  energy  dependent  upon  the 
truth  of  mystical  inspiration,  we  immediately  find 
Professor  James  concluding  his  paragraph  : 

"  And  80  we  stand  once  more  before  that  problem  of 
truth  which  confronted  us  at  the  end  of  the  lectures  on 
saintliness.  You  will  remember  that  we  turned  to 
mysticism  jyrecisely  to  get  some  light  on  truth.^^ 

Having  thus  put  aside,  a  Httle  too  rigorously  (/ 
think),  those  fruits  for  life  whose  value  depends  upon 
their  not  being  "  misbegotten "  by  **  mistaken " 
inspiration.  Professor  James  is  at  last  attacking  the 
question  of  the  "  value  for  knowledge  of  the  conscious- 
ness which  they  (i.e.,  the  mystical  states)  produce." 


IV 

"  In  spite  of  this  repudiation  of  articulate  self- 
description,"  begins  this  inquiry  ("  Varieties  of  Rehgious 
Experience,"  p.  415),  *'  mystical  states  in  general  assert 
a  pretty  distinct  theoretic  drift.    It  is  possible  to  give 

»  Republic  III.  Jowett  translates  "  Royal." 


« 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   loi 

the  outcome  of  the  majority  of  them  in  terms  that 

point   in    definite    philosophical    directions.     One   of 

these  directions  is  optimism,  and  the  other  is  monism." 

Now  let  me  grasp  that :   the  value  to  knowledge,  of 

mystical  states,  would  therefore  be  due  to  these  mystical 

states  adding  certain  items  to  what  we  hitherto  know, 

to  wit  the  facts  (or  facts  leading  to  the  facts)  that  the 

universe  is  all  for  the  best  (optimism),  or  that  the  universe, 

perhaps  with  its  Creator  thrown  in,  is  one  (monism). 

Now  we  have  indeed  got  at  last  to  value  for  knowledge  ! 

And  ten  minutes,  even  of  careful  attention,  are  surely 

not  too  much  to  bestow  upon  facts,  and  the  mystical 

conditions  requisite  for  the  ascertaining  of  such  facts, 

which  point  so  distinctly  to  the  real  regime  of  the 

universe. 

We  will  therefore  continue,  where  we  left  off, 
with  Professor  James's  summing  up  of  the  testimony 
of  Mystics  on  this  question  : 

"  We  pass  into  mystical  states  from  out  of  an  ordinary 
consciousness  as  from  a  smallness  into  a  vastness,  arid 
at  the  same  time  as  from  an  unrest  to  a  rest." 

How  does  this  testify  to  the  truth  of  optimism  and 
monism  ?  Why,  very  simply  :  the  mystic's  everyday 
consciousness  is  exchanged  for  an  unusual  one ;  the 
unusual  one  being  distinguished  by  vastness ;  now, 
as  the  everyday  consciousness  is  notoriously  con- 
cerned with  only  a  small  portion  of  the  universe,  the 
unusual   (that  is   the   mystical)   consciousness   being 


, 


I02 


Vital  Lies 


different,  is  probably  concerned  with  something 
different ;  and  being  further  differentiated  by  a  sense 
of  vastness,  it  is  possible  that  this  vastness  may  be 
due  to  the  passage  from  concern  with  a  small  part 
of  the  universe  to  concern  with  a  larger  part  of  the 
universe ;  for  is  not  everyday  consciousness  itself 
Uable  to  a  similar  sense  of  change  from  small  to  large 
when  we  pass,  let  us  say,  from  a  small  room  to  a  less 
small,  from  a  narrow  view  to  a  wider  ?  If,  therefore, 
the  mystic  in  his  unusual  state  feels  that  he  is  in  the 
presence  of  something  larger  than  in  his  everyday 
state,  may  he  not  suppose  (what  in  fact  the  mystic 
does  suppose)  that  there  must  be  some  larger  reaUty 
to  account  for  this  change  ?  Therefore  (i.e.,  by  this 
chain  of  reasoning)  the  mystic  has  come  in  contact 
with  some  unusual  and  larger  reahty.  And  since  it  is 
larger,  why  should  it  not  be  largest  ?  But  this  is  only 
a  part  of  the  matter :  the  mystic,  we  are  told  in  Pro- 
fessor James's  other  half  sentence,  experiences  not 
only  a  change  from  the  small  to  the  large,  but  at  the 
same  time  from  "  an  unrest  to  a  rest."  The  conclusion 
is  that  if  the  sense  of  largeness  (as  compared  to  previous 
smallness)  has  been  produced  in  the  mystic  by  his 
passage  from  the  presence  of  a  small  (everyday)  portion 
of  the  universe  to  the  presence  of  a  larger  part  of  the 
universe,  and  moreover  if  this  larger  is  not  only  larger, 
but  largest,  not  only  different  from  the  everyday 
fragment,  but  different  inasmuch  as  the  whole,  why, 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   103 

then,  this  transition  from  the  part  to  the  whole  (since 
we  have  admitted  it  to  be  the  whole)  is  a  transition 
from  the  unsatisfactory  milieu  productive  of  unrest 
to  the  satisfactory  milieu  productive  of  rest ;  in  other 
words  the  larger,  which  is  the  same  as  the  largest, 
which  is  the  same  as  the  whole,  which  is  the  same  as 
the  universe,  is  satisfactory  to  the  mystic,  which  is  the 
same  as  good  :  hence,  concludes  the  mystic  (or  Pro- 
fessor James  arguing  for  the  mystic,  or  more  precisely 
still  your  humble  servant  going  pedestrially  through  the 
steps  of  argument  which  Professor  James  has  bounded 
across) ;  hence,  says  the  mystic,  or  the  "  mystic 
consciousness "  sunmied  up  in  Professor  James's 
passage,  the  testimony  of  mystic  states  is  in  favour  of 
the  universe  being  one,  and  of  that  one  being  good, 
in  other  words  in  favour  of  monism  and  optimism. 

So  far,  so  good.  Or  rather  not  good  enough  (I 
mean  of  course  not  the  One,  the  Universe,  but  the 
mystical  testimony  in  favour  of  the  Oneness  and  the 
Goodness).  For  this  testimony  has  consisted  mainly  of 
inferences,  and  of  inferences  which  there  is  no  reason 
why  anyone  except  the  mystic  should  either  make  or 
accept :  first,  the  inference  that  because  the  mystical 
state  is  unusual  it  must  put  us  into  the  presence  of 
items  which  are  unattainable  in  the  everyday,  v^ual 
consciousness ;  second,  that  these  unusual  and  un- 
attainable items,  being  accompanied  by  a  sense  of  a 
certain  change  of  magnitude,  must  be  items  concerning 


\. 


I04 


Vital   Lies 


a  LARGER  portion  of    the    whole ;    thirdly,  that    this 
sense  of  something  larger  must  refer  to  the  universe ; 
fourthly,   that  this  sense  of  something  hrger  must 
be  a  sense  of  something  largest ;    fifthly,  not  merely 
largest  to  the  possibihties  of  feehng  of  the  particular 
mystic  [as  for  instance  a  given  volume  of  sound  or  a 
given  extent  of  view  may  be  the  largest  to  the  possi- 
bilities of  feehng  of  an  everyday  person],  but  largest 
in  se  and  as  such,  in  other  words  the  Whole.    While, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  have  a  sixth  inference  that  the 
accompanying  sense  of  restfulness  after  unrest  refers 
to  this  passage  from  a  smaller  to  a  larger  which  is  the 
largest,  which  is  the  whole ;  and  a  seventh  inference,  that 
the  sense  of  restfulness  to  the  mystic  must  coincide 
with  the  absolute  goodness  in  se  (as  distinguished 
from   comparative   goodness   to   the  mystic's   appre- 
hension) of  this  Whole.    Here  we  have  seven  inferences, 
or  rather  seven  propositions  which,  while  they  may 
be  true,  may  also  be  false  ;  seven  inferences  without 
one   single   reason   for   their   acceptance   except   the 
mystic's  opinion  and  the  opinion  of  the  persons  who 
agree  with  his  opinion.     It  is  as  if  the  mystic  repeated 
seven  times  over  :   "I  know  that  the  universe  is  Oney 
and  I  know  that  the  One  is  satisfactory."    All  that 
such  reiteration  would  tell  us  is  that  the  mystic  is 
convinced  of  this  fact,  or  really,  more  strictly,  that 
the  mystic  is  stating  it.    So  far  as  our  knowledge  goes, 
we  have  learned  only  the  mystic's  view  of  the  oneness 


^ 


r 


h 


\\  ; 


I 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   105 

and  the  satisfactoriness ;  we  have  learned  not  about 
the  universe,  but  about  the  mystic's  (and  the  mystic's 
sponsors'  and  abettors')  chain  of  seven  inferences. 
But  this  is  of  course  not  all :  the  mystical  evidence 
(otherwise  it  would  not  be  evidence)  contains  facts, 
facts  which  have  been  connected  by  those  numerous 
acts  of  inference.  So  far  these  facts  are  :  first,  that 
the  mystic  feels  himself  in  an  unusual  state  of  conscious- 
ness ;  second,  that  the  mystic  feels  a  change  "  as 
from  a  smallness  into  a  vastness  "  ;  and  third,  "  as 
from  an  unrest  to  a  rest."  Having  made  a  note 
of  these,  let  us  proceed  with  Professor  James's  enumera- 
tion of  the  other  items  with  which  mystical  states  can 
enrich  knowledge.  I  will  return  back,  so  as  to  show  the 
progression  from  one  fact  or  order  of  facts,  to  another  : 
"  We  pass  into  mystical  states  from  out  of  ordinary 
consciousness  as  from  a  less  into  a  more,  as  from  a 
smallness  into  a  vastness,  and  at  the  same  time  as  from 
an  unrest  to  a  rest.  We  feel  them  as  reconciling,  unifying 
states.  [This  is  a  repetition  of  the  contents  of  the 
previous  sentence,  with  the  addition  of  reconciliation 
which  is  a  cause  of  rest.]  "  They  appeal  to  the  yes- 
function  more  than  to  the  no-function  in  us.  In  them 
the  unlimited  absorbs  the  limits  and  peacefully  closes 
the  account.  Their  very  denial  of  every  adjective  you 
may  propose  as  applicable  to  the  uUitnate  truth  .  .  . 
though  it  seems  on  the  surface  to  be  a  no-function — is 
a  denial  made  on  behalf  of  a  deeper  yes." 


h 


io6 


Vital  Lies 


I  was  on  the  point  of  summing  up  the  value  to  know- 
ledge of  the  foregoing  statements ;  but  Professor 
James  has  done  it  himself  a  few  pages  (p.  425)  later : 
"  The  fact  is,"  he  writes,  "  that  the  mystical  feeling 
of  enlargement,  union,  and  emancipation  has  no  specific 
intellectual  contents  whatever  of  its  own.  It  is  capable 
of  forming  matrimonial  alliances  with  material  furnished 
by  the  most  diverse  philosophies  and  theologies,  provided 
only  they  can  find  a  place  in  their  framework  for  its 
peculiar  emotional  mood." 

Therefore,  whatever  truth  may  be  found  in  the 
works  of  the  mystics,  it  would  (according  to  the 
foregoing  quotation)  either  be  independent  of  their 
mysticism  and  imported  from  elsewhere,  or  else 
this  mystical  truth  (for  Professor  James  uses  this  ex- 
pression, p.  420)  would  have  to  be  of  a  kind  different 
from  what  truth  usually  is,  inasmuch  as  it  would 
be  truth  "  with  no  specific  intellectual  contents  what- 
ever of  its  own."  What  this  other  kind  of  truth 
may  be,  we  are  told  pretty  expUcitly  in  the  following 
passage : — 

"  In  mystical  literature  such  self -contradictory  phrases 
as  '  dazzling  obscurity,^  '  whispering  silence,''  *  teeming 
desert '  are  continually  met  vnth.  They  prove  that  not 
conceptual  speech,    but   music    rather,  is   the   element 


^% 


•1^ 


\j 


f\ 


V^ 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   107 

through  which  we  are  best  spoken  to  by  mystical  truth. 
Many  mystical  scriptures  are  indeed  little  more  than 
musical  compositions."  And  having  quoted  a  passage 
from  H.  P.  Blavatsky's  "  Voice  of  the  Silence,"  he  em- 
phasizes the  above  remark  by  the  addition  (p.  421) ; 
"  These  words,  if  they  do  not  awaken  laughter  as  you 
receive  them,  probably  stir  chords  within  you  which 
music  and  language  touch  in  common.  Music  gives  us 
ontological  messages  which  non-musical  criticism  is 
unable  to  contradict,  though  it  may  laugh  at  our  foolish- 
ness in  minding  them." 

But  not  music  only,  as  is  shown  in  a  further  pas- 
sage of  great  subtlety  and  beauty  (p.  383) :  "  Most 
of  us  can  remember  the  strangely  moving  power  of 
passages  in  certain  poems  read  when  we  were  young — 
irrational  doorways  as  they  were,  through  which  the 
mystery  of  fact,  the  wildness  and  the  pang  of  life, 
stole  into  our  hearts  and  thrilled  them.  The  words 
have  now,  perhaps,  become  mere  poUshed  surfaces  to 
us  ;  but  lyric  poetry  and  music  are  alive  and  significant 
only  in  proportion  as  they  fetch  these  vagus  vistas  of 
a  life  continuous  with  our  own,  beckoning  and  inviting, 
yet  ever  eluding  our  pursuit.  We  are  alive  or  dead  to 
the  eternal  inner  message  of  the  arts  according  as  we 
have  kept  or  lost  this  mystical  susceptibility." 


A, 


f 


1 08 


Vital  Lies 


VI 

The  existence  of  a  life  continuous  with  our  own.'' 
I  am  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  deny  that  Art 
(and  Music  is  here  the  typical  art)  does  deal  with  a 
life  continuous  with  our  own,  since  my  explanation  ^ 
of  Art's  importance  for  the  individual  and  the  race 
is  precisely  that  it  satisfies  our  craving  for  continuing 
our  own  sense  of  living  beyond  the  limits  of  our  own  life. 
All  the  satisfactions  which  Art  does  not  merely  share 
with  other  branches  of  experience,  pleasures  of  sen- 
suous stimulation,  of  logical  and  purposive  fitness,  or 
of  fulfilled  expectation,  aU  the  kinds  of  satisfaction'  by 
which  Art  distinguishes  itself  from  what  is  not  Art, 
arise  (according  to  my  school  of  psychological  esthetics) 
precisely  from  Man's  imaginatively  projecting  hfe  hke 
his  own   beyond  his  own  hfe's  Kmits,   and  thereby 
attaining  a  wider,  more  vivid,  and  more  harmonious 
sense  of  hving  than  is  habituaUy  afforded  by  his  prac- 
tical deaUngs  with  reahty.     Art,  therefore,  deals  in  a 
sense  far  more  Uteral  than  Professor  James  perhaps 
ever  thought  of,  with  a  life  continuous  with  our  own. 
But  Art  deals  with  such  a  life  continuous  with  our  own 
beyond  our  own  Hfe's  real  hmits  ;   makes  it,  makes  an 
enlargement,  a  continuity,  a  harmony  of  our  hfe; 

'  Cf.  "  Beauty  and  Ugliness,"  by  Vernon  Lee  and  C.  Anstruther 
Inomson.    John  Lane,  1912. 


\ 


(( 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   109 

makes  it,  observe,  not  discovers  it.  And  makes  it  be- 
cause we  want  it.  But  Art  does  not  bring  us  a  message 
from  or  about  something  already  existing  independent 
of  ourselves  :  nay,  just  because  no  such  world  of  life 
continu^ous  with  our  own  sends  us  a  message,  a  testi- 
mony, of  its  independent  existence,  does  Art  set  about 
making  one  to  satisfy  the  heart's  desire.  Religion 
works  for  that  satisfaction  ;  but  in  so  far  ReUgion  is 
two-thirds  unconscious  Art ;  nor  would  Religion  have 
survived  its  earUest  stages  of  utiUtarian  magic  based 
on  blunders,  had  not  it  enlisted  Art  in  its  service,  and, 
what  is  more,  done  Art's  own  duty  :  making  us,  by 
personification  of  moral  standards  and  metaphysical 
postulates,  a  universe  to  suit  the  heart's  desire. 

But  there  is  a  difference  between  ReHgion  and  Art : 
namely,  that  Art  never  pretends  the  desired  world 
of  continuous  and  more  perfect  life  to  have  an  in- 
dependent existence,  to  be  anjrthing  except  a  fabric  of 
human  making ;  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  the  very 
first  postulate  of  every  creed  has  precisely  been  and  is 
that  ReHgion  does  not  itself  make,  fabricate,  invent 
anything,  but  merely  brings  us  tidings  of  the  already 
and  independently  existing.  Art  has  never  laid 
claim  to  any  message  save  from  the  soul  of  man  to 
the  soul  of  man,  the  message  that  man's  own  powers 
have  answered  to  man's  own  needs  and  wishes.  But 
ReUgion  has  asserted  its  message  to  be  what  Pro- 
fessor James  calls  "  ontological."    Art  says  to  man  : 


11 


I 


I  lO 


Vital  Lies 


ll 


"  Behold  this  structure ;  it  is  fair,  and  it  is  I  that 
made  it  for  thy  service  and  joy  "  But  ReUgion  takes 
into  its  mouth  the  words  of  knowledge,  sajdng  :  "  Re- 
cognise and  beUeve  :  this  image  is  faithful ;  it  is 
important,  because  it  tells  of  something  which  exists 
for  and  in  itself  ;  and  fair  or  foul,  useless  or  serviceable, 
I  have  done  nothing  but  make  it  such  that  thy  eye 
could  see  it :  the  original  exists,  I  have  not  tampered 
with  it."  Or  briefly  :  "  This  is  a  message,  and  the 
message  is  irwe." 

True.  Here  we  are  back  again  at  "  What  is  Truth  ?  " 
And,  returning  to  the  great  Arch-Pragmatist  James 
(as  distinguished  from  the  humble  Proto-Pragmatist 
Peirce  !)  and  his  discussion  of  the  value  for  knowledge 
of  mystical  conditions,  we  had  better  forget  none  of 
the  Pragmatistic  tests— such  as  "  True-in-so-far-forth,'"' 
and  "  what  would  be  better  to  beUeve." 


VII 


Going  on  to  page  427  of  the  "  Varieties  of  ReUgious 
Experience,"  we  come  to  the  following  passage,  of  which 
I  desire  my  reader  to  appreciate  not  only  the  contents, 
but  the  original  and  suggestive  connection,  or  rather 
disconnection,  of  the  sentences.  "  Once  more  then, 
I  repeat  that  non-mystics  are  under  no  obligation  to 
acknowledge   in   mystical  states   a   superior  authority 


\p 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   1 1 1 

conferred  on  them  by  their  intrinsic  nature.  Yet,  I 
repeat  once  more,  the  existence  of  mystical  states  abso- 
lutely overthrows  the  pretension  of  non-mystical  states 
to  be  the  sole  and  ultimate  dictators  of  what  we  may 
believe.  As  a  rule,  mystical  states  merely  add  a  super- 
sensuous  meaning  to  the  ordinary  outward  data  of 
consciousness.  They  are  excitements  like  the  emotions  of 
love  or  ambition,  gifts  to  our  spirit  by  means  of  which 
facts  already  objectively  before  us  fall  into  new  expres- 
siveness and  make  a  new  connection  with  our  active  life. 
They  do  not  contradict  these  facts  as  such,  or  deny  any- 
thing that  our  senses  have  immediately  seized.^  It  is 
the  rationalistic  critic  who  plays  the  part  of  denier  in  the 
controversy,  and  his  denials  have  no  strength,  for  there 
never  can  be  a  state  of  facts  to  which  new  meaning  may  not 
truthfully  be  added,  provided  the  mind  ascend  to  a  more 
enveloping  point  of  view.  It  must  always  remain  an 
open  question  whether  mystical  states  may  not  possibly 
be  such  superior  points  of  view,  windows  through  which 
the  mind  looks  out  upon  a  more  extensive  and  inclusive 
world.'^ 

First,  let  me  see  whether  I  understand  the  initial 
statement  that  although  "  non-mystics  are  under  no 
obhgation  to  acknowledge  in  mystical  states  a  superior 
authority,  etc.    It  means  that  although  people  who 

*  They  sometimes  add  subjective  audita  bt  visa  to  the  facts,  but 
as  these  are  usually  interpreted  as  transmundane,  they  oblige  no 
alteration  in  the  facts  of  sense. 


\i- 


I  12 


Vital  Lies 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   1 1 3 


do   not  believe  in    the  testimony  of  mystical  states 
need  not  (to  which  one  might  add  a  substratum  of 
cannot)  be  made  to  beUeve  in  them,  yet  those  who  do 
believe  in  this  testimony  need  not  (and  cannot)  be 
argued  out  of  that  beUef.     This  looks  hke  a  drawn 
battle,   an   insoluble   controversy,    an   agreement   to 
disagree  to  all  Eternity ;    and  to  disagree,  moreover, 
about  an  ontological  message  and  its  truth  or  false- 
hood—that is  to  say,  about  a  statement  concerning  not 
the  preference  of  the  parties  involved  for  monism  and 
optimism  or  the  contrary,  or  the  comparative  suitable- 
ness  thereof   to   their  requirements,   but   concerning 
the  question  whether  the  universe  is  or  is  not  monisti- 
caUy  or  optimistically  arranged,  altogether  independent 
of  what  any  mystic's  or  non-mystic's  preferences  would 
like  it  to  be. 

And  first,  let  me  make  a  note  of  Professor  James's 
statement  (vide  supra)  that  "  as  a  rule  mystical  states  " 
..."  do  not  contradict  these  facts  "  {i.e.  facts  ah-eady 
objectively  before  us),  or  "  deny  anything  that  our 
senses  have  immediately  seized  "—which  taUies  with 
the  statement  two  sentences  back  that  "as  a  rule 
mystical  states  merely  add  a  supersensuous  meaning  to 
the  ordinary  outward  data  of  consciousness.''  In  this 
manner,  therefore,  mystical  states  neither  contradict 
facts  of  ordinary  consciousness  nor  add  other  facts  to 
them.  Facts  remain  just  where  and  how  they  were  : 
it  is  the  interpretation  of  these  facts  which  changes  : 


(**  mystical  states  merely  add  a  supersensuous  meaning") 

Mystical  states,  neither  contradicting  nor  adding  to 

facts,  are  therefore  reduced,  or  promoted,  to  being 

**  points   of   view  " — and   the   quotation   ends  :     "  It 

must  always  remain  an  open  question  whether  mystiml 

states  may  not  possibly  he  such  superior  points  of  view" 

Therefore  not  "  points  of  view  "  only,  but  "  points  of 

view  "  which  may  be  "  superior"    Now,  what  is  a 

**  superior  "  point  of  view  ?     The  next  half  sentence 

tells  us  "  it  is  a  window  through  which  the  mind  looks 

out  upon  a  more  extensive  and  inclusive  world."    This 

possible  superiority  of  the  mystic  point  of  view  may 

therefore  consist  in  its  telling  us  more  facts  (a  more 

extensive  world).     But  this  seems  scarcely  compatible 

with  the  previous  remark  about  the  facts  objectively 

before  us  not  being  contradicted  nor  added  to.    And 

indeed  we  have  been  told  that  "  as  a  rule  mystical 

states  merely  add  a  supersensuous  meaning  to  the  ordinary 

outward   data   of   consciousness."    The   superiority   of 

the  mystical  "  point  of  view  "  over  the  non-mystical 

"  point  of  view  "  must,  therefore,  be  sought  not  so 

much  in  that  extensiveness  of  what  is  seen,  but  rather 

in  the  inclusiveness  with  which  Professor  James  couples 

and  quaUfies  it  in  that  phrase  "  through  which  the 

mind  looks  out  upon  a  more  extensive  and  inclusive 

world."    The  superiority  of  the  mystic  point  of  view 

is,  therefore,  largely  (if  not  solely)  a  question  of  its 

greater  inclusiveness — by  which  is  meant,  I  suppose, 


I  ■■ 


\d 


114 


Vital  Lies 


a  greater  correlation  or  co-ordination  in  the  various 
seen  details,  one  item  being  included  or  enclosed  in  the 
other.  This  would  be  consonant  with  other  portions 
of  the  quoted  text,  Uke  "  mystical  states  merely  add  a 
supersensuous  meaning '''*  and  the  indisputable  taut- 
ology that  "  there  can  never  he  a  state  of  facts  to 
which  new  meanings  may  not  truthfully  he  added, 
provided  the  mind  ascend  to  a  more  enveloping  point  of 
view."  In  this  way,  a  man  who  has  ascended  to  a 
fourteenth-floor  window  may  take  in  the  fact  that 
what  seen  from  the  ground  floor  seemed  a  number  of 
small,  isolated  ponds,  are  in  reahty  the  continuous 
meanders  of  a  single  river.  Can  this  illustration  be 
correct  ?  My  mind  misgives  me ;  for  Professor 
James  has  told  us  that  mystic  testimony  does  not 
usually  alter  already  existing  objective  facts,  still 
less  contradict  them,  whereas  our  ascent  to  the  top  of 
the  tower  has  not  only  added  a  fact  to  the  objectively 
existing  one,  but  even  replaced  an  apparent  objective 
fact  (namely,  the  ponds)  by  a  really  objective  fact, 
to  wit,  the  existence  of  a  winding  river,  the  reality  of 
whose  continuous  meanders  can  be  tested  by  boating 
along  them. 

But,  after  all,  is  not  optimism  or  monism  also  the 
postulation  of  a  fact  ?  Does  it  not  mean  that  the 
Universe  is  one,  or  that  it  is  all  for  the  hest  ?  And  is 
not  the  oneness  of  the  Universe,  supposing  it  tp  exist, 
or  the  aU-for-the-hestness  of  the  Universe,  an  objective 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   115 

fact ;  if  it  is  a  fact  at  all  ?    For  an  objective  fact  surely 
means  a  fact  about  something  which  is  not  its  own 
perception  or  inference ;    and  if  monism  or  optimism 
was  only  a  subjective  fact,  that  would  mean  that  the 
fact  under   consideration   was    the  existence   of   an 
opinion,  perception,  or  inference  that  the  Universe  is 
one,  or  is  all  for  the  hest,  but  not  the  existence  of  such  a 
universe  :  if  monism  or  optisism  was  only  a  subjective 
fact,  some  one  who,  so  to  speak,  went  to  see  what  the 
universe  was  really  Hke  (as  we  might  go  and  look  into 
that  river-pond  question),   or  somebody  who  made 
plans  involving  that  view  of  the  Universe  (hke  our 
plan  of  boating  down  the  meandering  river,  which  we 
could  not  execute  if  the  river  turned  out  to  be  a  lot 
of  ponds),  such  a  person  might  find  that  the  only  fact 
in  the  whole  business  was  not  objective  but  subjective, 
to  wit,  that  some  other  person  had  thought  that  the 
Universe  was  monistically  or  optimistically  arranged. 
Of  course  the  pecuUarity  of  this  whole  business  is  that 
only  the  mystics  think  that  they  have  been  to  look 
how  the  Universe   is  arranged,   and  that  the  non- 
mystics  cannot  therefore  give  an  equally  definite  report, 
and  are,  as  Professor  James  remarks,  reduced  to  the 
poor  position    of    merely  denying  that  the  mystics 
have  gone  anywhere,  except,  perhaps,  out   of   their 
right  mind.     This  being  the  case,   "  non-mystics  are 
under  no  obligation  to  acknowledge  in  mystic  states  a 
superior  authority  conferred  on  them  hy  their  intrinsic 


J 


ii6 


Vital  Lies 


nature,''  and  Professor  James  adds :  "  Yet,  I  repeat 
it,  the  existence  of  mystical  states  absolutely  overthrows 
the  pretension  of  non-mystical  states  to  he  the  sole  and 
ultimate  dictators  of  what  we  may  believe." 


VIII 

{Parenthetical) 

"  Superficial  Medical  Talk  "  ("  Varieties,"  p.  413) 

You  must  not  think  that  Professor  James  came  to 
that  conclusion  on  any  mere  abstract,  still  less,  a 
jmori  grounds.    Finding,  as  we  have  seen,  that  the 
mere  examination  of  mystical  writings  did  not  decide 
whether  the  Mystics  had  really  travelled  beyond  the 
Flaming  Bounds  of  Time  and  Space,  he  collected  the 
evidence  of  other  persons  who  had  seemingly  made 
a  similar  excursion,  not  on  the  Seraph-wings  of  con- 
templation, but,  as  the  other  poet  says,  charioted  by 
Bacchus  and  his  pards.     "  The  sway  of  alcohol  over 
mankind,"  writes  Professor  James  ("  Varieties,"  p.  387), 
"  is  unquestionably  due  to  the  power  to  stimulate  the 
mystical  faculties  of  human  nature,  usually  crushed 
to  earth  by  the  cold  facts  and  dry  criticisms  of  the  sober 
hour.    Sobriety  diminishes,  discriminates,  and  says  no  ; 
drunkenness  expands,  unites,  and  says  yes.    ...   It 
brings  its  votary  from  the  chill  periphery  of  things  to  the 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   117 


radiant  core.  It  makes  him  for  the  moment  one  with 
truth."  The  Bacchus  charioting  the  psychological 
experimenter  was,  however,  usually  not  the  classic  God 
of  the  Grape,  but  (as  befits  the  modem  and  scientific 
character  of  Pragmatism)  Dionysus  Anaestheticus, 
he  whose  votive  fumes  hang  about  surgeries  and  who 
may  be  heard  babble  from  the  dentist's  dreaded  chair. 
Thus,  the  chapter  I  have  just  quoted  contains  several 
accounts  of  what  various  persons  (including  the  late 
J.  A.  Symonds)  experienced  under  chloroform  and 
other  anaesthetics ;  also  a  long  and  very  serious 
notice  of  a  rare  American  book  entitled  "  The 
Anaesthetic-Eevelation  and  the  Gist  of  Philosophy." 
But  Professor  James  had  not  been  satisfied  with 
information  obtained  at  second-hand ;  he  submitted 
his  own  self  to  poisoning  by  nitrous  oxide  gas, 
and  pubUshed  a  verbatim  record  of  his  utterances 
when  under  its  Bacchic  influence.  As  the  book  in 
which  I  am  studying  the  Truths  of  Mysticism  contains 
no  quotation  from  this  document,  I  have  copied  out 
the  following  sample  from  Professor  James's  earUer 
volume,  entitled  the  Will-to- Believe  (p.  296),  the  better 
to  appreciate  his  statement  that  "  Drunkenness  brings 
its  votary  from  the  chill  periphery  of  things  to  their 
radiant  core.  It  makes  him  for  the  moment  one  with 
truth." 

"What's  mistake  but  a  kind   of   take?      What's 
nausea  but  a  kind  of  ausea?    Sober,  drunk,— 'unk, 


ii8 


Vital  Lies 


astonislimeiit.  Everything  can  become  the  subject  of 
criticism.  How  criticize  without  something  to  criticize  ? 
Agreement  —  Disagreement !  Emotion  —  motion  !  ! ! 
.  .  .  Reconciliation  of  opposite — sober,  drunk,  all  the 
game ! 

"  Good  and  evil  reconciled  in  a  laugh  !  It  escapes, 
it  escapes !  But  —  what  escapes,  what  escapes  ? 
Emphasis,  Emphasis — there  must  be  some  emphasis  in 
order  for  there  to  be  a  phasis  .  .  .  Incoherent,  coherent 
.  .  .  same.  And  it  fades !  And  it's  infinite  !  And 
it's  infinite  !  If  it  wasn't  going,  why  should  you  hold 
on  to  it  ?  .  .  .  Extreme,  extreme,  extreme  !  Within 
the  extensity  that '  extreme  '  contains,  is  contained  the 
*  extreme  '  of  intensity. 

"  Something,  and  other  than  that  thing  !  .  .  .  There 
is  a  reconciliation.  Reconciliation  —  econciliation  ! 
By  God,  how  that  hurts !  By  God,  how  it  doesn't 
hurt !  Reconciliation  of  two  extremes.  By  George, 
nothing  but  othing  !  That  sounds  like  nonsense,  but 
it  is  pure  onsense !  Thought  deeper  than  Speech — 
Medical  School ;  divinity  school.  School !  School ! 
Oh  my  God,  oh  God,  oh  God  !  " 

The  chief  addition  brought  by  this  document  to 
the  knowledge  of  mystic  states  would  probably  con- 
sist in  the  resemblance  of  these  utterances  to  a  column 
of  Roget's  well-named  "  Thesaurus  of  English  Words 
and  Phrases,"  and  at  the  same  time  to  the  exercises 
of  a  person  fumbling  for  rhjrmes,  alhterations,  sym- 


1 


mm 


c 


I 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   119 


metrical  syllables  and  such-like  material  of  poetical 
expression.    If  the  reader  thereof  had  contracted  (per- 
haps in  the  study  of  Professor  James'  own  Principles 
of  Psychology)  a  taste  for  "  superficial  medical  talk  " 
—this  sceptic  might  add  that  something  of  the  sort 
would  probably  result  if  the  speech-centres  were  ex- 
cited to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else.    And  if  the 
sceptic  had  passed  beyond  that  stage  to  the  experi- 
ments and  hypotheses  of  some  of  Professor  James's 
more  recent  psychological  successors,  he  might  add 
that  these  particular  utterances,  and  the  analogous 
ones   (abundantly  represented  in  the   "  Varieties   of 
ReUgious  Experience")  from  bona- fide  mystics  both 
rehgious  and  poetical,  would  furnish  valuable  evidence 
for  the  theory  (held,  for  instance,  by  the  school  of 
Titchener)  that  our  intellectual  operations  employ  a 
framework,  so  to  speak,  of  motor-images  or,  if  you 
prefer,  of  senses  of  activity  and  its  modalities.     Such 
a  reader  would  point  out  that  these  inner  activities 
are  extraordinarily  well  represented  in  this  quotation  : 
there  is  connecting,  weighing,  comparing,  finding  equiva- 
lents, rejecting,  accepting  (particularly  that  yes-saying 
which  Professor  James  finds  characteristic  of  mysti- 
cism) with  all  the  prepositions  and  conjunctions,  the 
ands,  huts,  in-order-thafs,  must  he's,  etc.,  which  are 
their  grammatical  signs ;   there  is  a  constant  naming 
of   the    acts   we   are    most    conscious   of   in  think- 
ing :    thoughts   are  reconciled,  they  are  held  on  to, 


I20 


Vital  Lies 


they  are  pursued,  and  (alas,  how  characteristic !) 
thoughts  escape.  Even  in  that  treasury  just  referred 
to,  of  "  English  Words  and  Phrases — Classified  and 
Arranged  so  as  to  Facihtate  the  Expression  of  Ideas — 
And  assist  in — Literary  Composition  "  it  would  be 
impossible  to  find  a  more  varied  collection  of  every- 
thing necessary  for  the  above  purposes. 

But  the  sceptic,  being  only  a  sceptic,  would  note 
that  in  all  this  exhibition  of  the  necessaries  and  access- 
ories of  thinking,  there  is  an  important  omission  : 
there  is  not  anything  thought  about.  Indeed,  the 
sceptic  might  apply  to  this  interesting  pageful  one 
of  its  own  happiest  phrases :  "By  George,  nothing 
but  othing !  " 

That  is  the  sceptic's  hopeless  attitude.  It  is  not 
Professor  James's.  This  is  what  he  says  about  these 
same  experiences  under  nitrous  oxide  gas  :  "  Looking 
back  on  my  own  experiences,  they  all  converge  towards 
a  kind  of  insight  to  which  I  cannot  help  ascribing  some 
metaphysical  significance.  The  keynote  of  it  is  in- 
variably a  reconciliation.  It  is  as  if  the  opposites  of  the 
world,  whose  contradictions  and  conflict  make  all  our 
difficulties  and  troubles,  were  melted  into  unity." 

Yes ;  but  what  was  meUed  ?  The  troubles,  not 
what  caused  them ;  the  contradictions  and  conflicts 
felt  by  the  speaker,  not  the  reaUties  which  had  set 
them  up.  Even  as  when  anaesthetics  are  used  for  less 
metaphysico-mystic  purposes,  the  pain  is  aboKshed, 


H 


i/. 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   121 

melted  away  ;  but  the  surgeon's  knife  and  the  Umb  are 
not  melted  away;  nor  the  relations  between  knife 
and  hmb  which  we  sum  up  by  saying  that  the  one  has 
cut  o£E  the  other ;  so  also  in  this  case  the  displeasure 
caused  by  the  universe  and  its  arrangements  is  blotted 
out  from  that  particular  soul,  but  the  universe  itself 
goes  on  wagging  just  the  same.  Moreover,  even  in 
this  drugged  consciousness  the  universe  with  its 
"  opposite "  are  not  thought  of  as  "  melted  into 
unity  "  ;  the  universe,  whether  as  present  experience 
or  stored-up  images,  is  simply  not  thought  of  at  all. 
The  thinker,  the  subject,  is  absorbed  in  his  own  feel- 
ings ;  the  thought-of,  the  non-ego,  the  object,  has 
ceased  to  trouble  because  it  has  ceased  to  be  present 
in  consciousness,  banished  from  that  "  radiant  core  " 
to  what  Professor  James  has  called  (in  his  fine  descrip- 
tion of  the  drunken  man's  mental  condition)  "  the 
chill  periphery  of  things."  We  have  been  shown  the 
scheme  of  a  comphcated  drama  of  thinking  and  feel- 
ing :  entries  and  exits,  the  gestures,  the  facial  ex- 
pression and  tones  of  voice,  all  the  stage  business  of 
escaping  and  holding  on,  of  separation  and  reconciha- 
tion,  the  agony  and  the  blessed  rehef  ("  By  God,  how 
that  hurts  !  by  God,  how  it  doesn't  hurt !  ") ;  but  we 
have  not  been  shown  the  dramatis  personce  nor  the 
scenery  and  properties.  The  how  is  all  there,  but  the 
what  is  missing  ;  the  what  on  which  depends  the  why  ; 
the  what  and  the  why  which,  however,  infinitesimally 


i 


122 


Vital  Lies 


i 


scrappy,  may  have  some  "  value  for  krowledge.'* 
Of  course  the  sceptic  may  also  say  that  in  this  case 
the  what  (which  governs  the  why)  the  sample  of  the 
universe  whereof  all  this  is  a  message  (like  the  leaf 
in  the  dove's  bill)  is  simply  a  well-known  chemical 
substance  called  nitrous  oxide  gas,  taken  in  com- 
bination with  certain  less-known  substances  called 
the  brain,  the  nerves,  and  the  viscera.  In  this  sense 
the  ancBSthetic  revelation  would  indeed  be  a  revelation 
from  the  core,  that  is  to  say,  from  the  drugged 
person's — how  shall  I  call  it  ? — inside.  And,  with  the 
casual  candour  of  Pragmatism,  Professor  James  seems, 
in  another  part  of  the  same  volume  (p.  512)  himself  to 
entertain  this  view.  "  Let  me  then  propose  as  an 
hypothesis,"  he  says,  "  that  whatever  it  may  be  on  its 
farther  side,  the  '  more  '  with  which  in  religious  experi- 
ence we  feel  ourselves  connected  is  on  its  hither  side  the 
sub-conscious  continuation  of  our  conscious  life."  Now 
if  the  Conscious  is  what  is  usually  called  the  Mind ; 
and  if  the  sub-conscious  is  what  we  know  or  guess 
to  exist  below  (or  behind)  the  Mind,  then  the  sub- 
conscious, so  far  as  it  is  not  merely  a  vaguer,  an 
unfocussed  part  of  consciousness,  can  only  be  what 
such  Psychology  as  Professor  James  (with  its  elaborate 
brain  and  nerve  anatomy,  its  cerebral  localization,  and 
its  theory  of  the  visceral  and  vaso-motor  nature  of 
emotion)  teaches  us  to  recognize  below  or  behind  mind, 
namely,  the  Body,  or,  more  correctly,  the  bodily  pro- 


i% 


<\ 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   123 

cesses.  And  this  view  (whether  right  or  wrong)  is 
logically  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  Professor  James 
has  studied  the  mystic  consciousness  in  direct  con- 
nection (as  we  have  just  seen)  with  fumes  and  drams 
which  have  been  poured,  not  metaphorically  into  the 
soul,  but  hterally,  and  by  the  respiratory  and  ali- 
mentary channels,  into  the  body.  On  this  definition 
of  the  sub-conscious — and  Professor  James  of  the 
famous  "  Lange- James  "  hypothesis  cannot  logically 
have  any  other — the  invasion  (as  he  is  going  to  call  it) 
from  the  suh-conscioits  would  mean  that  by  alcohohc, 
anaesthetic  or  "  organic "  poisoning  of  the  organs 
which  normally  keep  our  microcosm  connected  with 
the  macrocosm,  the  mind  would  be  emptied  of  its 
normal  supply  of  sensations  and  memories  and  left 
open  to  invasions  of  facts  usually  hidden  or  merged 
into  vagueness,  or  even  (as  Siegmund  Freud  supposes  in 
the  case  of  dreams)  suppressed  in  the  lucid  condition. 
The  periphery  of  things,  as  Professor  James  calls  it, 
would  no  longer  shed  its  chilly  influence  on  the  mystic 
any  more  than  on  the  drunkard ;  his  consciousness 
would  be  flooded  with  the  knowledge  of  his  own  bodily 
self  ;  and,  if  he  had  the  use  of  speech,  he  would  talk,  as 
Professor  James  did  under  nitrous  oxide  gas,  solely  of 
the  doings  and  feelings  of  that  if  not  exactly  radiant,  at 
all  events  highly  irradiating,  and  all-else  obliterating 
core. 
The  above  is  the  only  way  in  which  I  can  understand 


m 


124 


Vital  Lies 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   125 


Professor  James  introduction  into  this  examination 
of  religious  mysticism,  of  the  "  invasions  of  the  sub- 
conscious "  ;  and  what  is  more  significant,  of  the 
action  of  alcohoUc  and  anaesthetic  intoxication,  which 
can  be  mentioned  in  this  connection  only  if  we  suppose 
(what  the  "superficial  medical  talk"  does  suppose) 
that  some  equivalent  auto-intoxication  may  be  pro- 
duced by  the  bad  habit  of  body  and  the  bad  bodily 
habits  of  hona-fide  rehgious  mystics. 

But  whether  or  not  Professor  James  intended  to 
convey  this  connection  of  the  sub-conscious  with  the 
bodily  substratum  so  abnormally  treated  in  all  these 
cases  ;  one  thing  is  clear  and  undeniable  :  Professor 
James  considers  the  sub-conscious  wheresoever  it  re- 
sideth,  as  part  and  parcel  of  ourselves.  For,  as  you 
will  see  in  the  following  quotation,  he  speaks  of  its 
"  invasions  "  as  "  taking  on  an  objective  appearance,'' 
which  these  invasions  would  not  require  to  do  if  they 
were  invasions  from  outside  us,  and  in  so  far  already 
objective  and  provided  with  an  objective  appearance. 

"  Starting  thus,"  he  continues  on  that  page,  512), 
"  with  a  recognized  psychological  fact  {i.e.  the  existence 
of  a  '  sub-conscious  continuation  of  our  conscious  life ') 
we  seem  to  preserve  a  contact  with  '  science  '  which  the 
ordinary  theologian  lacks.  At  the  same  time  the  theo- 
logian's contention  that  the  religious  man  is  moved  by 
an  external  power  is  vindicated,  for  it  is  one  of  the 
peculiarities  of  invasions  from  the  sub-conscious  region 


4 


i 


to  take  on  objective  appearances,  and  to  suggest  to  the 
subject  an  external  control.  In  the  religious  life  the 
control  is  felt  as  '  higher ' ;  but  since  in  our  own 
hypothesis  it  is  primarily  the  higher  faculties  of  our 
hidden  mind  which  are  controlling,  the  sense  of  union 
with  the  power  beyond  us  is  a  sense  of  something, 
not  merely  apparent,  but  literally  true." 

In  other  words,  the  theologian  who  thinks  that  the 
Mystical  Kevelation  comes  from  God  ("  an  External 
Power  ")  and  Professor  James  who  thinks  that  the 
Mystical  Revelation  comes  from  our  own  subconscious- 
ness ^  plus  occasional  anaesthesia  or  auto-intoxication, 
are  both  thinking  the  same  thing.  And  that  same 
thing  which  one  is  referring  to  the  "  Chill  periphery  " 
and  the  other  to  the  "  Radiant  core  "—that  same  thing 
is  "  not  only  apparently  but  literally  true." 

But  as  for  us  sceptics  we  can  only  stand  more  or  less 

1  Perhaps  it  may  enlighten  this  question  of  sub-consciousness  if 
I  quote  from  a  recent  article  {Revue  Philosophique,  May  1910)  by 
Monsieur  P.  Janet,  one  of  the  men  who  first  and  most  completely 
studied  the  phenomena  summed  up  under  that  misleading  name  : 

"L'examen  de  certaine  troubles  mentaux  nous  a  permis    de 

montrer que    certains     phenomenes     psychologiques     etaient 

parfaitement  reels,  mais  que  les  sujets,  par  suite d'un  trouble 

dans  la  formation  de  leur  perception  personnelle,  ne  rattachaient 
pas  cesf aits  k  leur  personnaUte,  n'en  prenaient  pas  conscience.  J'ai 
appele  ces  faits  des  phenomenes  sub-conscients.  Beacoup  de  philo- 
sophes  en  ont  tir6  cette  conclusion  bizarre,  qu'il  y  avail  au- 
dessom  de  la  conscience  normale  un  rnonde  mysf&ieux  et  tout  puissant 
de  pensdes  profondes,  et  ils  font  jouer  A  ces  pensies  latentes  un  rdle 
merveiUeux:'  I  think  that  Professor  James  is  one  of  these  "  philo- 
sophers." 


■ 


126 


Vital  Lies 


respectfully  aside  ;  and,  if  we  are  wise,  meditate  over 
another  most  pregnant  verse  of  the  nitrous-oxide 
message : 

"  Something,  and  other  than  that  thing  .  .  . 

There  is  a  reconcihation. 

Reconcihation. 

E-concihation  .  .  . 

Reconcihation  of  Two  Extremes." 


IX 


Fortunately  Professor  James's  book  is  written  not 
only  for  mystics,  but  also  for  non-mystics.  And  as 
these,  he  has  told  us,  "  are  under  no  obhgation  to 
acknowledge  in  mystic  states  a  superior  authority 
conferred  on  them  by  their  intrinsic  nature,"  he  has 
discussed  mystical  states  and  their  value  for  knowledge 
from  the  point  of  view  of  mere  pragmation,  of  that 
philosophy  which  was  invented  by  Mr  Ch.  S.  Peirce 
with  the  sole  and  express  object  of  helping  us  **  to 
make  our  ideas  clear." 

So  let  us  ask  Professor  James  to  make  our  ideas 
rather  clearer  than  (owing  to  our  sceptical  bias)  they 
were  left  by  the  last  quotations  in  the  last  chapter. 

You  will  remember  the  reference  to  the  ontological 
messages  of  music  and  the  other  arts  ?  Well,  that  is 
most  satisfactorily  connected  with  what  Professor 
James  tells  us  (page  427)  about  the  mystical  states 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   127 

giving  "excitements,  like  the  emotions  of  love  or 
ambition,  gifts  to  our  spirits  by  means  of  which 
facts  already  objectively  before  us  fall  into  a  new 
expressiveness.' 

Like  the  emotion  of  love !  That  likeness  has  led, 
on  the  part  of  a  whole  school  of  sceptics  (amongst 
others,  that  most  interesting  critic,  Dr  Leuba)  to  a 
deal  of  discussion  which  Professor  James,  out  of 
reverence  either  for  ReUgion  or  for  Mrs  Grundy,  has 
passed  over  in  austere  but  not  quite  scientific  silence. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  with  any  such  indelicate  analogies 
to  the  connection  between  mystical  states  and  drunken- 
ness and  anaesthesia  that  I  am  going  to  distress  my 
Anglo-Saxon  readers.  We  will  deal  with  the  com- 
parison between  mystical  excitement  and  the  emotion 
of  love,  not  on  the  plane  of  any  possible  common  (Lange- 
James)  bodily  origin,  but  simply  on  that  of  their  being, 
as  Professor  James  calls  them  both  "  gifts  to  our 
spirit,  by  means  of  which  facts  already  objectively 
before  us  fall  into  new  expressiveness." 

And,  in  order  to  understand  the  working  of  this 
obscure  and  rare  gift  to  the  spirit,  namely  mystical 
excitement,  and  the  manner  in  which  it  conjures 
already  existing  facts  into  new  expressiveness,  I  will 
examine  the  similar  working  of  that  other  excitement 
to  which  Professor  James  has  compared  it,  the 
emotion  of  love.     Behold,  I  am  doing  so. 

No  one  will  deny  that  the  emotion  of  love  produces 


\l 


I 


i»*" 


128 


Vital  Lies 


< 


an  alteration  in  one's  view  of  most  things.    In  the 
first  place,  it  fills  the  consciousness  with  one  matter, 
which  not  only  extrudes  many  others  from  the  focus 
of  attention,  but  which  becomes,  by  a  law  repeatedly 
formulated  by  psychologists,  the  centre  of  synthesis, 
or,  in  common  language,  the  chief  interest  to  which 
everything  is  referred :    everything  reminds  the  lover 
of  his  mistress,  the  stars  are  hke  her  eyes,  or  they  are 
looked  at  by  her  eyes  ;  flowers  are  Uke  her  breath,  or 
they  may,   Hke   poor  Gretchen's   Daisy,   bear  some 
"  loves  me— loves  me  not  "  message  about  her  ;  more- 
over, places  and  persons  take  on  a  meaning  connected 
with  this  love ;   even  letters  of  the  alphabet  or  dates 
in     the    almanac    becoming   consecrate   to   its   sole 
service.    How  much  doth  calf  love  gloat  over  a  name, 
and  how,  even  to  the  love  of  those  far  older  than 
calves,  the  fact  of  sharing  a  not  uncommon  name 
with  the  beloved,  may  lend  grace  to  every  woman 
called  Mary,  or  every  man  called  Jones !    The  whole 
subject  has   been   studied,   and   more   pathologically 
than  it  should  be— for  there  is  nothing  pathological 
whatever  about  it— under  the  name  of  the  symbolism 
or  fetichism  of  lovers.    In  this  way  does  the  emotion 
of  love  make  lovers  see  many  things  invisible  to  those 
who  do  not  love,  and  imagine  they  see  sundry  others 
which  are  not  there  to  see  at  all ;   and  here  we  may 
employ  advantageously  an  adjective  furnished  us  by 
Professor  James  himself,  nay,  two  adjectives,  meaning 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  129 

much  the  same  thing  ("  a  more  envehping  point  of 
view — a  more  inclusive  world  "),  and  sum  up  our  re- 
marks by  saying  that  the  person  in  a  state  of  love- 
excitement  envelopes  all  things  thinkable  in  a  net  of 
ideas  connected  with  his  passion ;  and  that,  corre- 
sponding thereunto,  the  world  perceived  and  reasoned 
about  by  the  lover  is  a  world  included  in  his  love,  all 
the  rest  being,  ipso  facto^  excluded.  Neither  is  this 
all :  that  excitement  of  love  consists,  very  largely, 
in  cravings,  and  hence  in  expectations  ;  and  the  lover 
becomes  not  only  subtle  in  foreseeing  all  chances  of 
meeting  the  beloved,  but,  owing  to  his  attention  being 
closed  to  most  other  things,  he  is  perpetually  thrown 
into  agitated  hopes  and  fears,  and  not  only  missing  no 
slightest  reference  to  his  love  in  other  person's  con- 
versation, but  finding  such  references  where  there  are 
none ;  nay,  as  the  poets  tell  us,  in  the  rustle  of  the 
leaves,  the  babble  of  the  stream,  and  the  mocking 
voice  of  the  echo.  The  whole  visible,  audible,  sensible, 
thinkable  world  has  taken  on  for  him  a  new  express- 
iveness, that  is  to  say,  that  the  lover  finds  in  it  all  what 
he  finds  above  all  in  the  music  made  very  often  by  men 
who  were  not  thinking  of  love  at  all,  and  invariably 
by  men  who  were  not  thinking  of  his  love,  the  expression 
of  his  emotion.  And  here  we  are,  back  in  the  presence 
of  music  and  poetry  and  all  art,  to  whose  function,  as 
Professor  James  has  reminded  us,  we  should  be  deaf 
were  we  incapable  of  an  interpretative  activity  which 


II 


I30 


Vital  Lies 


he  points  out  as  the  rudimentary  form,  the  simplest 
element,  of  the  mystical  state.  Back  also  at  my 
remark  that  Art  never  pretends  to  give  us  ontological 
messages,  but  merely  constructs  an  imaginary  world 
wherein  we  can  hve,  we  and  our  heart's  desire. 

We  are  also  back  at  the  consideration  of  the  mystical 
states — the  better  understanding  of  whose  **  gift  to  our 
spirit "  Professor  James  has  compared,  and  thereby 
enabled  us  to  compare,  with  the  gift  to  our  spirit  due 
to  the  excitement  of  the  emotion  of  love.  And  as 
regards  the  gifts  to  the  spirit  of  this  lattei  state  of 
excitement,  I  think  we  may  wind  up  that,  what- 
ever heightening  of  vitaUty,  developing  of  the  soul's 
powers  of  hoping,  striving,  and  enduring,  whatever 
unintended  replenishing  and  harmonising  of  our  whole 
nature  the  lover's  emotion  may  bring  as  a  gift  to  the 
spirit,  the  lover's  state  of  emotional  excitement  will 
indeed  lead  him  to  see  and  infer  very  different  things 
from  those  visible  and  inferable  by  the  man  who  is 
not  in  love ;  but  that  this  emotional  excitement  of 
love  will  also  prevent  the  lover  from  seeing  and  infer- 
ring just  as  many  other  things  which  the  everyday 
individual  does  happen  to  see  and  infer ;  in  short, 
that  the  lover  sees  both  more  correctly  and  more 
incorrectly  as  a  result  of  his  emotion,  so  that,  in  the 
long  run,  we  are  obhged  to  confirm  some  of  his  state  < 
ments  and  invahdate  others  by  a  comparison  with 
those  of  the  man  who  is  not  in  love,  and  whose  spirit 


I 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  131 

has  not,  at  that  moment,  received  the  gifts  of  inter- 
pretation and  misinterpretation  which  emotional  ex- 
citement and  its  attendant  mono-ideism  bring  to  us. 

This  would  be  a  case  (remembering  Professor  James's 
remark  in  "Pragmatism")  of  "one  triUh  having 
no  worse  enemy  than  another  truth  "  ;  the  in-so-far- 
forth  truth  of  the  man  in  love  having  to  run  the  gauntlet 
of  the  (not  necessarily  in-so-far-forth)  truth  of  the  man 
rhot  in  love ;  with  the  frequent  curious  result  that  the 
truth  obtained  through  a  "  Gift  to  the  Spirit,"  to  wit, 
amorous  excitement,  might  be  absolutely  worsted  in 
the  encounter. 


But  what  if  all  Truths,  at  least  all  Truths  Which- 
It-Might-Be-Better-to-BeUeve,  should  turn  out  to  be 
born  of  Gifts  to  the  Spirit,  of  Passions  and  Excitements  1 
The  base-born  truths,  bent  only  on  work-a-day  drop- 
ping into  their  lawful  place,  would  (like  mediae val 
commoners  and  serfs)  be  shut  out  from  the  tournament, 
where  theological  and  mystical  truths  (to  which  Pro- 
fessor James  adds  truths  of  patriotism  and  politics), 
would  riot  undisturbed  in  the  fine  fratricidal  fight  of 
peers  and  seigneurs.  Or,  rather,  even  as  the  Iliad  is 
the  war  of  gods  and  goddesses  behind  their  human 
heroic  children,  so  the  contest  between  the  various 
hostile    tmths-in-so-far  forth    would    really    be    the 


m 


132 


Vital  Lies 


battle  between  various  Gifts  to  the  Spiiit,  Passions 
and  Intuitions  eternally  at  loggerheads,  and  dragging 
the  Truths  by  them  engendered  into  the  ever-raging, 
ever-renewed  epic  fray.  Human  Belief  would  thus 
truly  be  what  Pragtnatists  speak  of  with  such  pride 
and  pleasure :  a  risk,  an  adventure,  occasionally  as  in 
the  case  of  that  proto-Pragmatist  Pascal,  admitting 
of  a  most  unsporting  piece  of  betting. 

Well!    Professor   James   does   really   countenance 
this  view,  namely,  that  these  various  Truths-which- 
it-would-be-better-to-beUeve,  are  engendered  by  Pas- 
sions   and   not    by    anything    more    humdrum    and 
reasonable.    The  very  word  engendered  is  suppUed  by 
him.    For  this  is  what  we  read  on  page  436  of  the 
"  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience "  :  "I  beheve,  in 
fact,  that  the  logical  reason  of  man  operates  in  this  field 
of  divinity  exactly  as  it  has  always  operated  in  love, 
or  in  patriotism,  or  in  politics,  or  in  any  other  of 
the  wider  affairs  of  hfe  in  which  our  passions  or  our 
mystical  intuitions  fix  our  beUef  beforehand.     It  finds 
arguments  for  our  conviction;    for,  indeed,  it  has 
to  find  them.     It  ampHfies  it  and  defines  it,  and 
lends    it   words    and    plausibility.     It   hardly   ever 
engenders  it." 

Oh,  Galuppi  Baldasaaro,  this  is  very  sad  to  find  ! 

I  can  hardly  misconceive  you  ;  it  would  prove  me  d«af  and 

blind  ... 
But  although  I  take  your  meaning,  'tis  with  such  a  heavy 

mind  •  t  • 


, 


I 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   133 

For  the  meaning  in  this  case  would  surely  be  that 
the  Gift  to  the  Spirit  in  no  way  secures  for  its 
possessors  that  under  and  more  inclusive  view  of  facts 
of  which  these  gifted  people  feel  so  uncommonly 
cocksure.  For  remark  that  Professor  James  does 
not  confine  his  denial  of  being  reason-engendered  to 
the  state  of  believing  and  being  convinced,  but  apphes 
that  genealogical  indictment  to  the  idea  believed,  the 
idea  about  which  one  is  convinced.  He  tells  us  that 
reason  while  incapable  of  engendering  such  belief  and 
conviction,  does  nevertheless  amplify  and  define  it. 
Now  reason,  logical  or  illogical,  can  no  more  amplify 
and  define  the  state  of  believing  and  being  convinced 
than  you  can  widen  (amplify)  or  restrict  (define)  the 
state  of  carrying  a  load  ;  just  as  what  can  be  widened 
or  restricted  is  the  load  itself,  so  also  what  can  be 
amplified  or  defined  is  the  not  beheving  or  being 
convinced,  but  the  idea  which  is  the  object  of  that 
belief  and  that  conviction.  It  is,  therefore,  the  idea 
which  patriots,  politicians,  and  religious  persons  believe 
in  and  are  convirtced  about  which,  according  to  Pro- 
fessor James,  is  "  hardly  ever  engendered  by  logical 
reason."  Hence  the  patriotic,  poHtical,  or  religious 
ideas,  are  presumably  engendered  by  our  Passions, 
the  plain  name  which  Professor  James  here  gives  to 
what  he  elsewhere  calls  Gifts  to  our  Spirit.  This  does, 
indeed,  appear  to  be  Professor  James's  view  of  the 
case  ;  he  writes  quite  unmistakeably  about  the  ''  wider 


134 


Vital  Lies 


affairs  of  life  in  which  our  passions  or  our  mystical 
intuitions  fix  our  belief  heforehand.^^ 

"  Fix  our  belief  beforehand"— V^eH^  how  does  the 
fixing  by  passion  exclude  the  prehminary  engendering 
by  something  else,  even  by  logical  reason  ?     For  you 
must  have  something  to  fix  before  you  can  fix  it,  and 
that  something — ^in  this  case  an  idea,  a  thought  of,  a 
supposed  fact — has  been  previously  produced.    Now, 
do  passions,  even  of  politicians  and  divines,  produce 
ideas,  engender  them  ?    And  when  we  say  that  these 
passions  can  fix  our  behefs,  do  we  mean    anything 
except  that  they  can  fix,  or  rather  direct,  our  attention  ? 
Passions  can  make  us  look  in  one  quarter  rather  than 
another  ;  more  particularly  they  can  make  us  overlook, 
chin  in  the  air,  eyes  on  the  clouds,  the  items  in  which 
they  scent  no  interest.    But,  however  much  we  may 
thus  avoid  the  ideas  which  do  not  suit  those  passions, 
I  do  not  see  how,  by  such  fixing  and  directing  of  the 
attention,  we  engender  the  ideas  that  do.    Something 
else  is  required  for  that.    Take  the  case  of  Pascal's 
mystic  experience,  when  he  inferred  that  the  state  of 
sudden  well-being,  of  euphoria,  and  the  sensation  of 
blinding  Hght,  were  causally  connected  with  the  fact 
(which  his  mind  had  been  bent  on  for  months)  of  divine 
grace.    Did  his  passion  engender  either  those  items  or 
even  connect  them  ? 

(That  would  be  a  bad  business  for  the  wider  and  more 
inclusive  view  of  facts  claimed  for  the  mystics.)    Or 


^ 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   135 

rather,  let  us  keep  our  hands  ofE  the  mystics,  and  knock 
about  a  trivial  example  of  that  other  analogous  Gift  to 
the  Spirit,  namely,  the  lover's.  The  lover's  passion 
fixes  his  belief  :  it  directs  his  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  beloved  wears  a  particular  costume,  it  directs  his 
attention  away  from  the  equally  existing  fact  that  a 
cap  and  apron  can  be  transferred  from  one  wearer  to 
another.  From  the  fact  passionately  fixed  upon  thus, 
namely,  that  Susanna  (in  the  "  Marriage  of  Figaro  ") 
wore  that  apron  and  cap  at  11  a.m.,  he  infers  that  the 
person  wearing  that  apron  and  cap  at  11  p.m.  must 
also  be  the  fascinating  soubrette,  and  it  just  happens 
to  be  his  own  neglected,  nay,  forgotten  Countess ! 

The  Count's  passion  has  certainly  fixed  his  behef ,  and 
fixed  it  wrongly.  But  was  it  the  passion  which  en- 
gendered the  idea  thus  wrongly  fixed  upon  by  that  over- 
passionate  personage  of  comedy  ? 

Indeed,  it  seems  to  me  (even  in  the  face  of  so  great 
a  psychologist  as  Professor  James)  that  great  as  is  the 
power  of  passion,  its  tyranny  can  choose  and  decide, 
accept  and  reject,  destroy  to  an  unUmited  extent, 
but  it  cannot  create.  Above  all  it  cannot  engender 
an  idea.  That  is  done  by  something  else,  by  a  humble 
wedded  couple,  rather  left  out  in  the  cold  by  latter  day 
philosophers  :  that  faithful  fertile  pair  called  Fact  and 
Thought,  or,  more  grandiosely,  the  Order  of  Things  and 
the  Constitution  of  Mind. 

There  has  been  some  rather  slovenly  thinking  of  late 


i 


136 


Vital  Lies 


(perhaps  not  without  passionate  pride  in  its  own 
slovenliness !)  about  this  supposed  production  of 
"  beUefs  "  and  **  conditions  "  by  "  Passion,"  until  we 
have  got  to  a  kind  of  intellectual  parthenogenesis, 
where  that  great  mother  of  ideas  (who  was  once,  in  Dr 
Schiller's  pragmatistic  mythology,  no  less  than  Aphro- 
dite ^  in  person)  sits  in  mysterious  state,  and  the  devoted 
foster-father  Reason  attends  ready  to  introduce  Wise 
Men  from  the  East  or  to  organize  some  hurried  flight 
into  Egypt. 


XI 


Perhaps  Passion,  albeit  not  that  of  the  theologian 
or  poHtician,  has,  in  the  meanwhile,  been  misdirecting 
my  logical  reason,  and  fostering,  if  not  engendering,  an 
entirely  wrong  idea  of  what  Professor  James  is  talking 
about.  For,  in  my  summing  up  of  Professor  James's 
harsh  dismissal  of  the  mystical  increment  of  energy  and 
viitvie {mistaken  and  misbegotten  he  actually  called  it!)  in 
the  cases  where  their  ** inspiration"  proves  "erroneous," 
I  have  been  utterly  forgetting  his  previous  decision 
that  "  If  theological  ideas  prove  to  have  a  value  for 
concrete  life  they  will  be  true  for  Pragmatism."  Now 
this  completely  saves  the  situation :    the  Energy  and 

*  Schiller,  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  208  "  (Pragmatic  truths), 
born  of  passion  and  sprung,  like  Aphrodite,  from  a  foaming  sea  of 
desire." 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   137 

Virtue  being  in  themselves  good,  their  inspiration  wiU 
(for  Pragmatism)  be  tme ;  true  is  the  reverse  of  errone- 
ous, so  the  energy  and  virtue  sprung  from  inspiration 
which  is  not  erroneous  could  not  possibly  be  mistaken 
and  misbegotten.  It  is  the  neatest,  possible  logical 
circle,  and  not  a  vicious,  but  a  virtuous  one  ! 

That  hangs  together  with  what  I  read  in  Professor 
James's  other  book  ("  Pragmatism,"  p.  273)  about 
universal  conceptions  :  "  If  they  have  any  use  they  have 
that  amount  of  meaning.  And  that  meaning  will  be 
true  if  the  uses  square  with  life's  other  uses."  And  in 
the  same  bpok,  p.  75  :  "If  there  be  any  life  that  is  really 
better  we  should  lead,  and  if  there  be  any  idea  which,  if 
believed  in,  would  help  us  to  lead  that  life,  then  it  would 
be  better  for  us  to  believe  in  that  idea,  unless,  indeed, 
belief  in  it  incidentally  clashed  with  other  greater  vital 
benefits." 

As  I  re-read  these  quotations  I  am  overwhelmed  by  a 
suspicion  :  is  it  possible  that  in  my  slow  and  halting 
(although  of  course,  rather  passioruUe  than  logically 
rational)  attempt  to  follow  every  step  of  Professor 
James's  discussion  of  the  mystical  states  and  their  value 
for  knowledge  (instead  of  swinging  along  pragmatically 
on  a  "  therefore,"  a  "  because,"  a  "  then  "  to  the  full 
intention  of  the  passage),  is  it  possible  that  I  have  left 
anything  out  ? 

Good  Heavens,  yes.  For,  turning  back  to  p.  247  of 
the  *'  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  the  sentence 


138 


Vital  Lies 


Btares  me  in  the  face  with  its  complete  significance : 
"They  (mystical  states)  are  excitementB  like  the  emotion 
of  love  and  ambition,  gifts  to  our  spirit  by  means  of 
which  facts  already  objectively  before  us  fall  into  a  new 
expressiveness  ...  (it  was  here  that  I  broke  off)  and 
make  a  new  connection  with  our  active  life.'' 

Extraordinary  that  I  should  have  missed  out  that 
half  sentence  !  For,  I  remember,  I  have  even  quoted 
the  one  immediately  following,  viz. :  "  They  do  not 
contradict  these  facts  as  such,  or  deny  anything  that  our 
senses  have  immediately  seized  .  .  .  there  never  can 
be  a  state  of  facts  to  which  new  meaning  may  not 
truthfully  be  added,  provided  the  mind  ascend  to  a  more 
enveloping  point  of  view." 

What  must  have  happened  is  that  the  passages  about 
facts,  "  facts  abready  objectively  before  us  fall  into  a  new 
expressiveness  "—and  "  They  do  not  contradict  these 
facts  as  such  "—somehow  coalesced  in  my  thoughts 
and  covered  over,  hidden  in  their  overlapping,  that 
little  half  sentence  which  looks  so  unimportant,  and 
which  is  yet  (on  such  unobtrusive  points  do  great 
results  sometimes  turn  !)  the  very  pivot  of  the  whole 
valuation  of  mystical  states  "for  knowledge,"  and 
indeed,  the  pivot  of  the  pragmatistic  re-valuation 
of  truth.  Let  me  repeat  it,  contemplate,  emblazon, 
enshrine  it ! — 

"  And  make  a  new  connection  with  our  active  life." 
Do  the  energy  and  virtue  bred  of  mystical  states 


I 


4 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   139 

make  such  a  new  connection  ?  In  some  eloquent  pages 
("  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  309  and  363) 
Professor  James  examines  the  question  whether  re- 
hgion  stands  approved  by  its  fruits  as  these  are  exhibited 
in  the  saintly  type  of  character;  and  answers  it  as 
follows : — 

"  Whoever  possesses  strongly  this  sense  (of  the  divine) 
comes  naturally  to  think  that  the  smallest  details  of 
this  world  derive  infinite  significance  from  their  re- 
lation to  an  unseen  order.  The  thought  of  this  order 
yields  him  a  superior  denomination  of  happiness,  and  a 
steadfastness  of  soul  with  which  no  other  can  compare. 
In  social  relations  his  serviceability  is  exemplary ;  he 
abounds  in  impulses  to  help.  His  help  is  inward  as 
well  as  outward,  for  his  sympathy  reaches  souls  as  well 
as  bodies,  and  kindles  imsuspected  faculties  therein. 
Instead  of  placing  happiness  where  common  men  place 
it,  in  comfort,  he  places  it  in  a  higher  kind  of  inner 
excitement,  which  converts  discomforts  into  sources 
of  cheer  and  annuls  unhappiness.  So  he  turns  his  back 
upon  no  duty,  however  thankless ;  -  and  when  we  are 
in  need  of  assistance  we  can  count  upon  the  saint 
lending  his  hand  with  more  certainty  than  we  can  count 
upon  any  other  person.  Finally  his  humble-minded- 
ness  and  his  ascetic  tendencies  save  him  from  the  petty 
personal  pretensions  which  so  obstruct  our  ordinary 
social  intercourse,  and  his  purity  gives  us  in  him  a 
clean  man  for  a  companion." 


\i 


40 


Vital  Lies 


Moreover,  Professor  James  bids  us  remember  that 
saintliness  is  apt  to  turn  to  heroism. 

"  Now,  mankind's  conmion  instinct  for  reality  has 
always  held  the  world  to  be  essentially  a  theatre  for 
heroism.     In  heroism,  we  feel,  life's  supreme  mystery 
is  hidden.    We  tolerate  no  one  who  has  no  capacity 
whatever  for  it  in  any  direction.     On  the  other  hand, 
no  matter  what  a  man's  frailties  otherwise^may  be, 
if  he  be  willing  to  risk  death,  and  still  more,  if  he  suffer 
it  heroically,  in  the  service  he  has  chosen,  the  fact 
consecrates  him  for  ever.    Each  of  us  in  his  own  person 
feels  that  a  high-hearted  indifference  to  life  would 
expiate  all  his  short-comings.    The  folly  of  the  cross, 
Bo  inexplicable  by  the  intellect,  has  yet  its  indestructible 
vital  meaning.    .    .    .    Naturalistic  optimism  is  mere 
syllabub  and  flattery  and  sponge-cake  in  comparison.'* 
Now,  although  the  "  folly  of  the  cross  "  and  all  this 
saintly  heroism  for  which  it  stands,  may  be,  as  Professor 
James  tells  us,  "  inexplicable  by  the  intellect  " — of  the 
saint,  who  happens  to  possess  it,  by  no  means  follows 
that  it  is  "  inexplicable  "  as  regards  its  utility  to  the 
race  at  large  by  the  calmer  and  more  judicial  intellect 
of  the  practical  man  who  is  appraising  it  from  a  mere 
utilitarian  point  of  view.    Professor  James  is  just  such 
a  calm,  judicial,  practical  man,  and  this  is  how,  immedi- 
ately after  that  pastry-cook's  metaphor  apphed  to 
Naturalistic    optimism,    he    judicially    appraises    the 
ascetic's  enthusiasm. 


i 


\ 


< 


,. 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism  141 


"  The  practical  course  of  action  for  us,  as  religious 
men,  would  therefore,  it  seems  to  me,  not  be  simply 
to  turn  our  backs  upon  the  ascetic  impulse,  as 
most  of  us  to-day  turn  them,  but  rather  to  dis- 
cover some  outlet  for  it  of  which  the  fruits  in  the 
way  of  privation  and  hardships  will  be  objectively 

useful." 

"  As  religious  men  "—I  have  underUned  those  words, 
because  I  should  have  thought  that  to  the  reUgious  mind 
the  justification  of  reUgious  impulses  would  be  in  the 
reUgion  itself,  the  justification  of  the  foUy  of  the  cross 
would  be,  so  to  speak,  in  the  Cross  and  all  it  stands  for. 
But  then,  I  am  not  among  "  religious  men,"  and  cannot 
place  myself  at  their  point  of  view  of  trying  to  discover 
some  way  of  turning  the  self-denial  and  heroism  of 
reUgious  fervour  into  an  outlet  leading  to  the  "  object- 
ively useful."     Moreover,  we   must  remember   that 
we  have  been  valuing  mystical  states,  if  not  always 
strictly   "for   knowledge,"    at   aU   events  from  the 
Pragmatistic  point  of  view,  namely,  that  "  If  there 
be  any  life  that  it  is  really  better  we  should  lead, 
and  if  there  be  any  idea  which,  if  beUeved  in,  would 
help  us  to  lead  that  life,  then  it  would  be  better 
for  us  to  believe  in  that  idea,  unless,  indeed,  belief 
in   it   incidentally  clashed  with  other  greater  vital 

benefits." 

Now,  we  have  been  expressly  told  that  the  mystics 
themselves  necessarily  beUeves  in  the  truth  of  (shall 


{ 


we  call  them  ?)  the  orUological  messages  acquired  during 
his  mystical  states,  so  that  it  is  idle  disputing  whether 
he  is  or  is  not  to  give  them  his  belief.     On  the  other 
hand  we  have  been  equaUy  told  that  this  beUef  can 
never  be  communicated  (remember  that  our  beliefs  or 
convictions  are  hardly  ever  engendered  in  such  matters 
by  logical  reason  !)  to  the  sceptics  and  deniers,  least  of 
all  to  those  who  have  listened  to  "  shallow  medical 
talk  "—such  as  does  not  bear  upon  the  mystical  states' 
mhie  for  knowledge.     Both  mystics  and  non-mystics 
havmg  been  ruled  out,  the  valuation  of  the  mystical 
states  is  left  in  the  hands  of  those  other  persons,  religious 
men  Uke  Professor  James  himself,  unbiassed  in  either 
sense,  and  who,  by  careful  estimation  of  possible  *'  fruits 
for  Hfe,"  are  alone  capable  of  applying  the  pragmatic 
pnnciple   (Pragmatism,"   p.   273)   that   "we   cannot 
reject  any  hypothesis  if  consequences  useful  to  life  flow 
from  it.  .  .  .  If  they  (universal  conceptions)  have  any 
use  they  have  that  amount  of  meaning.    And  that 
meaning  wiU  be  true  if  the  uses  square  with  life's  other 
uses." 

Now  I  understand  why  the  rehgious  men  were 
advised  to  inquire  for  outlets  which  should  or  could 
direct  the  FoUy  of  the  Cross  and  similar  mystical 
heroism  to  something  ''  objectively  useful."  The 
inquiry  in  question  is  imphcit  in  the  whole  of  Professor 
James's  volume,  and  at  the  end  he  sums  up  its  results 
as  foUows  C  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  377) : 


i 


The  Truths  of  Mysticism   143 

"  In  a  general  way  then,  and  on  the  whole,  our 
abandonment  of  theological  criteria  and  our  test- 
ing of  religion  by  practical  commonsense  and  the 
empirical  method  leave  it  in  possession  of  its 
towering  place  in  history.  Economically  the  saintly 
group  of  qualities  is  indispensable  to  the  world's 
welfare." 

Well,  that  is  precisely  what  I  might  have  said,  and 
other  persons,  not  accounted  "  reUgious  men,"  who 
believe  in  the  occasional,  perhaps  frequent,  necessity 
for  the  World's  Welfare  of  Noble  Lies  like  Plato's,  or 
Vital  Lies  like  Ibsen's,  and  all  their  many  intentional 
and  unintentional  varieties :  Mistakes,  Delusions, 
Fallacies  and  Falsehoods.  But  the  advantage  of 
Pragmatism  is  that  you  need  not  stoop  to  such  immoral 
views  or  such  offensive  language.  For  Pragmatism 
(with  Professor  James's  voice)  declares  : — 

("  Pragmatism,"  p.  28) :    "  You  can  say  of  it  (an 
opinion)  either  that  it  is  useful  because  it  is  true,  or  it 
is  true  because  it  is  useful.    Both  these  phrases  mean 
exactly  the  same  thing." 
and  again,  p.  75  : 

"  The  true  is  the  name  of  whatever  proves  itself  to 
be  good  in  the  way  of  belief,  and  good,  too,  for 
definable,  assignable  reasons." 


sJi'^JlM 


144 


Vital  Lies 


XII 


Thus,  while  learning  wherein  consists  the  value  for 
knowledge  of  mystical  states,  we  have,  incidentally, 
learned  about  some  of  those  definabhy  assignable  reasons 
which  give  us  the  right  to  call  opinions  true. 


CHAPTER  IV 
FRUITS  FOR  LIFE 


^    "  To  pass  a  spiritual  judgment  upon  these  states  we  must . . 
inquire  into  their  Fruits  for  Life." 

(W.  James,  "  Variety  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  413.) 

-J^RUITS  for  Ufe.~The  Pragmatism,  I  have  been 
J^      arraigning,   and  arraigning  solely  inasmuch 
and  forasmuch,   is  an  obscurantist   method 
primarily  concerned  wtih  increase  or  maintenance  of 
these ;    while  its  definitions  of  truth  in  general,  its 
discussions  of  truths  in  particular,  are  secondary  and 
subservient  to  this  concern  for  similar  Fruits  for  Life. 
For  at  the  bottom  of  such  obscurantist  methods, 
whether  theoretically  proclaimed  or  merely  incidentally 
appUed,  is  one  preoccupation  which  characterises  and 
unites  them  however   dissimilar   and  scattered,   the 
pre-occupation  with  what  I  must  call  (a  very  modem 
name  for  a  very  modem  conception!)  the  dynamo- 
genetic  property  of  ideas. 

That  an  idea,  nay,  a  mere  mdimentary  mental  image, 
if  occupying  the  focus  of  attention,  will  set  up  a  mood! 
determine  an  action  or  re-arrange  and  co-ordinate  the 

*K  146 


/ 


146 


Vital  Lies 


rest  of  the  mind's  contents,  unless  such  effects  are  pre- 
vented by  the  similar  but  superior  power  of  what  we 
call  objective  facts  in  contradiction  to  such  ideas,  this, 
which  I  have  summed  up  as  the  dynamogenetic  property 
of  ideas,  is  one  of  the  most  popular  generalizations  of 
modem  mental  science ;  and  it  is  also  one  of  the  pet 
postulates  of  those  investigations  and  speculations 
which  hide  their  disorder  under  the  name  of  Sociology. 
In  fact,  while  modem  philosophers  have  been  busily 
employed  (and  none  more  busy,  naturally,  than  apolo- 
gists for  obscure  dogmas,  none  more  busy  than  all 
the  various  pragmatistic  obscurantists)  attacking  the 
prestige  and  shaking  the  throne  of  the  reputed  monarch 
Reason,  their  attempt  to  instate  Will  (or  more  properly 
Wish)  in  Reason's  stead,  has  really  resulted  in  showing 
that  Will,  Wish  and  the  various  Emotions  are  them- 
selves subject  to  the  domination  of  intellectual  images, 
or  groups  of  memories,  in  fact,  of  simple  or  complex 
ideas.  If  to  fed  makes  you  think  ;  to  think,  to  think 
of  something  or  a  relation  of  somethings,  makes  you 
feel  in  a  manner  conditioned  by  that  thought.  Hence, 
we  get  among  other  hypotheses,  which  have  been 
welcomed  as  much  for  their  names  as  for  their 
meaning,  the  Id^  Forces  of  Monsieur  FouiUee. 

And  this  remark  about  Fouill6e's  Id^es  Forces  leads 
me  to  an  essential  peculiarity  of  this  dynamogenetic 
property  of  ideas  :  namely,  that  it  may  be  the  property 
of  two  separate  and  different  ideas,  in  fact,  the  dynamo- 


Fruits  for  Life  147 

genetic  property  of  a  name  awakening  in  one  mind  an 
idea  that  may  differ  in  ninety-nine  particulars  from 
the  idea  awakened  in  another  mind,  while  agreeing 
with  it  on  the  one  point  of  generating  a  given  mood, 
emotion,  or  attitude.    Whether  names  as  such  can  act 
dynamogenetically  without  the  interposition  of  any 
idea  at  all ;  whether  emotions  and  attitudes,  dynamic 
soul-states   in    their   turn   generate   ideas;     whether 
either  of  these  proceedings  has  invariable  precedence, 
are   questions   for   nice   philosophical   definition   and 
elaborate    psychologic    investigation,    which,    taken 
together,  may  some  day  revolutionize  this  subject. 
But  whether  or  not  it  eventually  turns  out  that  such 
an  idea  must  always  be  present  in  case  of  soul-dynamo- 
genesis,  this  much  is  akeady  obvious,  to  wit,  that  an 
idea  can  act  thus  dynamogeneticaUy  in  one  mind 
without  itself  having  been  produced  by  a  correspond- 
ing, or  cognate,  or  indeed  an?/  idea  in  any  other  person's 
mind.    Are  we  not  famiUar  with  the  imaginatively 
dynamogenetic  properties   of  smells,   contacts,   fifes, 
drums,    bells    and    church-organs?      Above    all    (re- 
turning to  my  theme),  are  we  not  familiar  with  the 
dynamogenetic  property  of  luords  ?    Indeed,  this  whole 
question  can  be  best  understood  by  considering  this 
power  of  words. 

For,  even  as  a  word  has  a  great  many  connotations, 
so  an  "  idea  "-a  dynamogenetic  "  idea  "—may  cover, 
so  to  speak,  a  great  many  different  ideas,  which  wiU 


ill 


148 


Vital  Lies 


in  no  two  cases  be  the  same,  its  identity  (if  we  may 
speak  of  identity  where  there  is  none !)  consisting  in 
a  property  of  awakening  given  moods  and  attitudes. 


n 


Now  philosophers  bent  upon  such  "  Fruits  for  Life," 
as  we  have  found  to  be  Professor  James's  continual  pre- 
occupation, fix  their  attention  upon  this  one  point  of 
similarity,  namely,  the  similarity  in  spiritual  dynamo- 
genesis,  and  ignore  the  rest.    Thus  the  idea  "  CathoU- 
cism  "  has  not  meant  quite  the  same  thing  for  Father 
Tyrrell  as  for  Pope  Pius  X ;    but  that  "  idea  "  has 
sufficed  to  make  both  of  them  feel  in  conmiunion  with 
many  miUions  of  other  persons  ahve  or  dead  to  whom 
it  also  did  not  mean  the  same  thing,  and  enabled  them 
both  to  partake  of  the  same  sacraments  with  the  same 
mystical    fervour,  until   indeed  the  Pope's  unphilo- 
sophical  attachment  to  definitions  and  his  ignorance 
of  Bergsonian  Pragmatism,  resulted  in  Father  Tyrrell 
being  excluded  from  that  communion  and  deprived  of 
those  sacraments. 

Similarly  it  will,  I  hope,  presently  become  plain  to 
my  readers  that  the  idea  "General  Strike"  is  not 
the  same  in  the  mind  of  Monsieur  Sorel,  the  philo- 
sophical expounder  of  its  "  mystic "  value,  and  in 
the   mind  of  the  French  Syndicahst  Proletarian,  in 


I 


; 


, 


Fruits  for  Life 


149 


whom  he  would  foster  this  ''mystic"  notion;  but 
what  is  the  same  is  the  dynamogenetic  property  of 
stirring  up  class  warfare  of  this  idea  "  General  Strike," 
as  it  appears  both  to  the  subtle  philosopher  and  to  the 
ignorant  trade  unionist. 

And  with  regard  to  my  third  example  of  applied 
Pragmatism,  we  shall  see  that  in  the  eyes  of  the  an- 
thropological Sociologist,  Crawley,  the  dynamogenetic 
property  of  religious  ideas  is  avowedly  the  only  thing 
common  to  the  theology  of  contemporary  church- 
going  conservatives  and  those  remotest  ancestors 
who  beUeved  in  eating  the  flesh  of  eminent  person- 
ahties  and  who  had  not  yet,  we  are  informed,  dis- 
tinguished between  the  notions  of  holiness  and  impurity. 


III 

I  will  meanwhile  forestall  the  results  of  my  study 
of  those  particular  instances  of — may  I  call  it? — 
Practical  Pragmatism,  by  remarking  that  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  undoubted  dynamogenetic  pro- 
perty of  ideas  may  be  due  to  ideas  being  expressed  (or 
rather  not  adequately  expressed)  by  words  :  you  can 
get  a  universal  "practical"  response,  because  the 
practical  response,  or  rather  what  produces  it,  is  just 
the  only  common  element  in  the  various  "ideas" 
grouped  under  one  single  name.    Indeed,  I  ahnost 


ISO 


Vital  Lies 


Fruits  for  Life 


i5> 


suspect  that  the  latter-day  unwillingness  for  definition, 
the  Bergsonites'  contempt  for  "  InteUigence "  as 
distinguished  from  "  intuition,"  the  fashionable  pre- 
ference for  "  unconscious  "  or  "  sub-conscious  "  states 
as  distinguished  from  "  conscious  "  ones,  may  be  due 
to — shall  we  say  ?— an  intuitive,  unreasoned,  uncon- 
scious, sub-conscious  consciousness  that  you  can  get 
more  "  fruits  for  Ufe  "  if  you  leave  people  to  their 
own  individual  definition  (or  lack  of  definition)  of  the 
"  idea  "  which  rings  them  back  to  church  or  trumpets 
them  on  to  battle. 


IV 

But  be  this  as  it  may  with  respect  to  the  popularity 
of  Bergsonian  and  cognate  philosophies,  the  present 
obsession  with  what  I  have  called  the  Dynamogenetic 
Property  of  Ideas  can  be  explained,  quite  apart  from 
rehgious  conservatism,  by  the  general  state  of  scientific 
thought.  The  conception  of  force  seems  to  be  replac- 
ing that  of  matter  ;  mutation  of  species  has  taken  the 
place  of  fixity ;  psychology  has  substituted  processes 
for  faculties ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  economist  is 
narrowing  supply  and  demand  into  acquiescence  and 
desire,  and  the  biologist  is  for  ever  asking  his  question  : 
what  use  has  this  for  the  individual  or  the  race  ?  The 
notions  of  activity,  of  alternative,  of  impulse,  instinct 


I 


I 


and  adaptation  are  dominant  in  every  department  of 
our  thinking.  Moreover,  the  scientific  spirit  tends  to 
fix  rather  on  what  is  than  what  should  6e,  and  the 
investigation  as  to  what  gives  us  the  right  to  consider 
anything  true,  is  replaced  by  the  study  of  what  actually 
happens  in  the  cases  when  anything  is,  however 
gratuitously,  considered  to  he  true.  Hence  a  general 
and  inevitable  intellectual  hankering  after  a  prag- 
matistic  alternation  (like  a  musical  shake  which  is 
two  notes  and  no  note  !)  between  truth  and  usefulness ; 
and,  to  return  to  my  main  subject,  a  sort  of  fascinated 
preoccupation  with  that  most  potent  of  mysterious 
questions,  that  question  which  deals  essentially  with 
confusions  and  powers,  the  dynamogenetic  property 
of  ideas,  and  of  the  names  given  to  ideas. 

Besides,  our  time  is  one  of  loosened  custom, 
questioned  law  and  consequent  universal  recourse 
to  persuasion  and  panacea.  We  all  want  to  save 
something  or  somebody,  we  are  all  urging  on  or  hold- 
ing back,  wanting  to  have  our  finger  into  this  great 
chaotically  shaping  pie  of  the  immediate  future.  We 
all  want  to  get  hold  of  other  folk's  volition  and  action, 
to  do  something  more  than  we  can  do  to,  or  through, 
or  for,  ourselves. 

Hence  Imperialism,  NationaUsm,  Progress,  Order, 
Orthodoxy,  Individuahsm,  SociaUsm.  What  words 
to  conjure  with !  What  investments  for  the  man  of 
actions,  the  moralist's,  the  saviour's,  dealing  with  his 


V 


152 


Vital  Lies 


Fruits  for  Life 


fellows ;  and  what  a  lot  of  meaning  they  all  have, 
these  great  idees  forces,  however  undefinable  or  in- 
coherent, if  only  we  measure  meaning  by  effect  on 
conduct. 


But,  even  as  in  the  fairy  story,  where  some  tiny 
proviso  takes  off,  alas,  so  much  of  the  spell's  value, 
of  the  magic  ring  or  magic  lamp's  virtue,  so  in  this 
matter  of  the  sovereign  power  of  ideas,  there  is  a  tire- 
some Uttle  condition  which  requires  fulfilling.  The 
idea,  in  order  to  have  effects  on  conduct,  mitst  he 
believed  to  he  true. 

Let  us  look  at  this,  occasionally  awkward,  pecuUarity 
of  the  dynamogenetic  property  of  ideas. 


VI 


We  may  approach  it  through  a  brief  return  to  the 
subject  (touched  upon  in  my  dealings  with  Professor 
James's  valuation  of  mystic  states)  of  Art,  Simply 
because  Art  happens  to  be  in  the  highest  degree 
dynamc^enetic,  and,  at  the  same  time,  conspicuously 
barren  of  practical  results  in  conduct.  I  am  thus 
explicit,  because  unlike  (I  think)  Professor  James,  I 
not  only  like  expHcitness,  but  I  am,  moreover,  far  from 


I 


a 


153 


Umiting  "  Fruits  for  Life  "  to  such  results  as  these. 
For  I  am  tempted  to  think  that  one  great  service 
rendered  to  Life  by  Art  may  just  have  been  the 
production  of  moods  and  attitudes  which  are  not  spent 
in  practice,  both  because  there  may  already  be  more 
such  practice  than  needful,  and  also  and  chiefly,  because 
such  spending  in  practice  may  check  the  refreshment, 
the  renewal,  the  alteration  and  purification  wrought 
in  the  soul  by  moods  and  attitudes  which  are 
dwelt  upon,  or  perhaps  I  should  have  said,  dwelt  in. 
Whether  this  notion  of  mine  prove  justified  or  not, 
no  one  will  deny  that  art  has  immense  dynamogenetic 
properties.  It  produces  moods  and  attitudes  of  what 
Professor  James  characterises  as  (acquiescence  or  nega- 
tion, of  optimism  or  pessimism  :  poetry,  music,  archi- 
tecture, even  the  humblest  pattern  art  produces,  in 
the  very  act  of  its  perception,  changes  in  the  degree 
and  mode  and  direction  of  our  activities.  But  the 
pecuUarity  of  Art  resides  in  the  fact  that  this  change 
in  ourselves  is  not  transformed  into  a  change  (or  an 
attempted  change)  of  something  not  ourselves :  the 
dynamogenetic  ideas  (and  an  artistic  form,  visible  or 
audible,  is  an  idea)  of  Art  do  not  abut  in  practice.  We 
may  be  obsessed  by  the  thought  of  the  treasure  in 
"  Treasure  Island,"  but  we  never  take  any  steps  to  dig 
it  up ;  and  only  in  hyperboUc  anecdote  has  a  play- 
goer ever  leapt  on  to  the  stage  and  throttled  lago. 
Yet  in  both  these  cases  the  idea  may  have  been  more 


ifi 


154 


Vital  Lies 


intensely  and  completely  dynamogenetic,  our  mood 
and  attitude  more  decided,  than  when  we  draw  our 
money  out  of  the  bank  on  a  bare  suggestion  of  possible 
future  insolvency,  or  when  we  call  the  police  on  the 
strength  of  mere  suspicious  noises  in  the  house.  The 
artistic  idea  has  in  these  opposite  cases  provoked 
greater  intensity  and  duration  and  exclusiveness  of 
mood  and  attitude ;  but  the  other  idea,  though  so 
much  less  vivid,  enduring  and  absorbing,  has  abutted 
in  action.  Now  the  difference  between  the  artistic 
idea  which  was  not  acted  upon,  and  the  non-artistic 
idea  which  loas  acted  upon,  Ues  in  the  absence  in  the 
one  case,  and  presence  in  the  other  of  something 
additional  which  is  itself  an  idea  :  the  idea  that  toe  are 
dealing  with  reality.  Stevenson's  "  Treasure  "  and  lago's 
villainy  are  ideas  which  are  not  true,  or  rather  which 
are  yonside  of  true  and  false.  But  the  idea  of  in- 
solvency of  the  bank,  or  the  idea  of  the  burglars  in 
our  house,  must  either  be  true  or  false,  and  so  long  as 
it  rr^ay  be  true,  it  results  in  action,  were  it  only  the 
action  of  inquiring  whether  it  happens  to  be  true  or 
false. 

This  is  the  explanation  why  artistic  ideas,  however 
much  they  move  us,  do  not  move  us  to  action ;  every 
child  knows  it,  and  practical  moralists,  among  whom 
I  find  even  so  expert  a  psychologist  as  Professor  James, 
are  apt  to  suspect  Art  of  turning  our  characters  soppy 
for  lack  of  such  abutment  in  action. 


h 


Fruits  for  Life 


155 


If 


1; 


it 


■I. 


And  thus,  through  our  excursion  into  the  function 
of  Art,  we  have  come  back  again,  and  face  to  face  with 
the  Httle  difficulty  besetting  those  who  value  ideas  for 
what  Professor  James  means  by  their  "  Fruits  for 
Life."  An  idea,  to  produce  action,  requires  that  we 
should  hold  in  our  mind  not  only  the  idea  itself,  but  the 
certainty,  the  probability,  or  at  least  the  possibiUty, 
of  its  heing  true.  Briefly :  we  require  to  beheve, 
beUeve  that  something  is  possible  if  not  certain,  befoie 
we  can  act.  And  what  we  beUeve  in  is  not  merely 
the  idea  of  that  something,  but  also  the  truth  of  that 
idea. 


VII 


This  is  not  all.  Ideas  will  not  produce  action  unless 
these  ideas  are  believed  to  be,  at  all  events  possibly, 
true.  But  belief  that  an  idea  is  or  may  be  true  will 
produce  action,  for  instance,  such  fruits  for  Hfe  as  the 
mystics  exhibit,  even  when  that  idea  not  only  may  be 
but  actually  is,  false.  The  only  thing  needed  is  that 
the  action  should  be  required  of  the  persons  who 
beUeve  that  it  is  true ;  or  that  the  people  from  whom 
the  action  is  required  should  be  the  same  who  do  the 
beheving.  Hence  the  practical  efficacy  of  mistakes, 
fallacies,  muddles,  delusions,  Noble  Lies  d  la  Plato 
or  Vital  Lies  after  the  less  classic  recipe  of  Ibsen.  You 
can  raise  fruits  for  life  out  of  all  of  them,  or  they  can 


156 


Vital  Lies 


Fruits  for  Life 


157 


be  left  to  produce  equally  nutritious  and  less  pre- 
carious fruits  for  life  without  any  cultivation,  so  long 
as  someone  believed  them  to  be  true.    Indeed,  we  shall 
see  by  studying  Mr  Crawley  and  M.  Sorel  on  myths, 
that  ideas  may  be  only  the  more  fruitful  for  life  because 
they  are  not  true  ;  and  the  Modernist  theory  of  sjrmbols 
is  but  a  re-statement  of  the  advantages  for  sentiment 
and  conduct  of  an  idea  which,  never  having  any  fixed 
contents,  can  never  be  proved  to  be  false  and  need 
never  be  asked  to  be  true.    I  have  stated  pretty 
plainly,  and  shall  (with  the  help  of  these  practical 
pragmatists)  show  more  plainly  still,  that  the  practi- 
cal value  of  ideas  depends  not  only  upon  being  true, 
but  also,  and  quite  independently,  upon  being  thought 
true. 

Speculative  thinkers  interested  in  questions  of  truth 
and  falsehood  for  their  own  sake  (let  us  say  because 
such  questions  involve  truth  and  falsehood),  can 
find  no  difficulty  in  admitting  all  this,  and  doing 
justice  to  all  the  various  efficacious  Ues,  noble  or  vital, 
or  neither  noble  nor  vital.  But  Pragmatism  of  the 
sort  I  am  deaUng  with.  Pragmatism  has  an  eye  to 
effects,  or  rather  effects  fill  its  whole  field  of  vision  and 
dazzle  it.  And  in  Pragmatism  of  this  kind  (I  am 
deahng  once  more  with  no  other),  such  dazzhng  pro- 
duces a  curious  illusion  :  when  an  effect  is  true  (and 
everything  which  truly  takes  place  is  evidently  true), 
how  can   its   cause   be   otherwise    than   true   also  ? 


And  the  way  to  make  that  cause,  namely,  an  idea, 
true,  is  to  define  truth  by  those  very  effects.  Hence 
the  various  answers  to,  or  evasions  of,  the  stoUd  old 
question,  "  What  is  Truth  ?  "  We  get  "  true-in-so- 
far-forth  "  and  the  trueness  of  these  theological  ideas 
which  "  prove  to  have  a  value  for  concrete  Ufe."  We 
get  "  will  be  true,  for  pragmatism,  in  the  sense  that 
they  are  good  for  so  much."  We  get  the  trueness 
of  Universal  conceptions  which  "  if  they  have  any  use 
have  that  amount  of  meaning,  and  the  meaning  will 
be  true  if  the  use  squares  with  Ufe's  other  uses  " ; 
and  so  on,,  till  we  arrive  at  that  supreme  identification 
by  superposition  ("  Pragmatism,"  page  76) .  "  What 
would  be  better  for  us  to  beheve  ?  That  sounds 
very  Uke  a  definition  of  truth ;  it  comes  very  near 
to  saying  what  we  ought  to  beheve !  Ought  we  ever 
not  to  beheve  what  it  would  be  better  for  us  to 
beheve  ?  " 

Something  which  has  good  effects  is  better  to  believe ; 
it  is  what  we  ought  to  beheve  ;  it  is  therefore  true,  and 
since  it  is  true,  it  is  evidently  what  we  cannot  help 
beheving.  And  by  this  curious  optical  delusion, 
turning  two  parallel  fines  into  a  circle,  quite  naturally 
and  ingenuously,  by  one  of  those  intuitive  processes 
which  it  holds  so  far  superior  to  reasoning,  Pragma- 
tism gets  hold  of  the  one  thing  needful :  the  dynamo- 
genetic  property  of  the  idea,  or  at  least  of  the  word, 
Truth.    For  Truth  is  what  you  vdlhngly  accept,  what 


<i> 


158 


Vital  Lies 


4 


you  accept  for  assignable  reasons,  to  wit,  its  useful- 
ness ;  but  Truth  is  also,  oh  miracle,  a  mysterious  prin- 
ciple which  wields  an  imperative.  Thus,  by  the  virtue 
of  circular  thinking,  Pragrmtistic  truth  becomes  a  law 
to  Itself.  Unluckily  it  is  not  a  law  to  any  one  else. 
If  you  believe  what  it  is  better  for  you  to  beheve, 
your  neighbour  beheves  what  it  is  better  for  him  to 
believe. 

Pragmatiwn,  as  one  of  those  first  enthusiastic  Prag- 
matists  later  confessed,  would  be  a  splendid  thing,  if 
only  one  could  monopoKse  it  for  oneself. 

For  there-^since  we  are  dealing  with  advantages 
determmng  belief  -  comes  in  the  advantage  of 
behevmg  in  truth  as  independent  of  your  wiUing : 
It  is  equally  independent  of  the  willing  of  your  con- 
tradictors. 


PART    II 

APPLIED  PRAGMATISM 


w 


i 


Benan  Fragm.  Phil.-Il  n'esaaye  pas  de  priver  ks  religiom  de 
leurs  dogmes  particvliers ;  il  n^  croit  pas  qu'en  analysant  les  diverses 
CToyances  on  tr<yu.vi^ait  U  viriU,  an  fond  du  crenset.  Une  teUe  opSra- 
turn  ne  donneraU  que  le  niant  et  le  vide,  chaque  chose  n'ayani  s<m 
pnx  que  par  la  forme  particvliire  qui  Venveloppe  et  la  caracUrise. 
Mats  tlprend  tout  symbole  pour  ce  qu'il  est,  une  expression  parH- 
eidtire  d'un  sentiment  qui  ne  saurait  tromperr 


f'v// 


CHAPTER  I 

FATHER  TYRRELL:  MODERNISM 
AND  THE  WILL  TO  CONTINUE 
BELIEVING  1 


"  Non  disse  Cristo  al  suo  primo  convento : 
Andate,  e  predicate  al  mondo  ciance" 

Dante,  Paradiso  XXIX. 

THE  quarrel  between  the  Pope  and  the  Modern- 
ists turns  upon  the  Right-to-BeUeve  in  a 
very  different  sense  from  that  discussed  by 
Pragmatism.  It  is  a  question  not  of  why  but  of  what. 
The  Pope  defines  certain  views  on  (what  we  are 
learning  to  think  of  as)  philological,  historical,  and 
philosophical  questions  as  indispensable  qualifications, 
if  not  for  salvation,  at  all  events  for  salvation  through 
the  organisation  for  salvation  over  which  he  himself 
presides,  and  by  means  of  the  sacraments  which  he 
dispenses.  If  you  do  not  hold  his  views,  you  are 
not  of  his  Church,  and  you  cannot  partake  of 
his  sacraments ;  you  are,  moreover,  presumably 
excluded  from  salvation,  since  the  Pope's  church 
is   the  special   organisation  for   salvation,   all   other 

1  "  Christianity  at  the  Cross  Roads."     By  George  Tyrrell.      1909 
(posthumous  work). 

1l  ui 


If 


l62 


Vital  Lies 


analogous  ones  being  not  only  unable  to  save, 
but,  owing  to  their  impious,  fraudulent  competition, 
eminently  efficacious  to  damn  you.  That  is  the  long 
and  the  short  of  what  the  Pope  says.  The  Modernists 
answer,  more  or  less  explicitly — and  usually  less  than 
more — that  certain  of  the  views  insisted  on  by  the  Pope 
are  mere  philological  and  historical  blunders  or  philo- 
sophical muddles,  and  that,  so  far  from  their  acceptance 
being  necessary  for  membership  of  the  church,  and 
participation  in  the  church's  sacraments,  they  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  either,  and  are  bound  to  be 
eliminated  out  of  the  church  and  disconnected  from  the 
church's  sacraments  by  the  continuation  of  that  very 
evolution,  which  built  up  the  merely  temporal  and 
human  institutions  and  dogmas,  wherein  the  imperish- 
able truths  of  rehgion  have  been  vehicled  through  the 
centuries  and  made  accessible  to  various  stages  of 
civilisation. 

Such  is  the  controversy  between  the  Pope  and  the 
Modernists,  sketched  roughly  from  a  distance,  and 
merging  all  individual  ins  and  outs  of  opinion  in  the 
general  outUnes.  We  will  examine  it  in  detail  in  the 
very  noble  posthumous  book  of  the  late  Father  Tyrrell. 

But  before  beginning  this  examination,  I  want  to 
point  out  how  the  Modernist  contention  and,  more 
particularly.  Father  Tyrrell's  apology  for  it,  can  be  used 
in  our  study  of  Pragmatism  and  the  Will-to-BeUeve. 

In  the  case  of  the  Modernists,  as  indeed  in  most  cases 


)  . 


Father  Tyrrell  163 

of  genuinely  religious  persons,  it  is  rather  the  Will-Not- 
to-Disbelieve. 

These  Modernists  are  scientific  inquirers  and  philo- 
sophic  thinkers,   philologists   and  historians   mainly, 
also,  in  the  case  at  least  of  Father  Tyrrell,  metaphysi- 
cians,   psychologists,    and   students    of   comparative 
religions.     The  facts  and  hypotheses  which  such  studies 
have  rendered  familiar  to  their  thoughts,  have  acted 
as  a  solvent  to  a  vast  amount  of  just  those  traditional 
views  which  the  Church  of  Pope  Pius  X.  holds  indis- 
pensable for  participation  in  that  Church's  sacraments  : 
the  solid  mass  of  dogma  and  quasi-dogma  has  been 
eaten  into  on  all  sides;    the  Pope  himself  having 
furnished,  in  his  EncycHcal,  a  detailed  descriptive  in- 
ventory of  the  ravages  of  modern  scientific  and  philo- 
sophic thought,  both  those  abready  to  be  lamented,  and 
those  also  to  be  feared  at  the  present  rate  of  the  erosive 
process.     Now,  such  an  erosion  of  religious  beliefs  has 
been  going  on  elsewhere  than  in  the  Catholic  Church ; 
indeed,  the  very  fact  of  Modernists  being  ordered  to 
recant,  shows  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  just  the  one 
where  it  has  operated  least.     The  hostility  of  Roman 
CathoKcism  to  any  kind  of  independent  inquiry  has 
driven  the  intellectual  class  of  certain  nations  and 
periods— say  the  French  eighteenth  century— entirely 
out  of  its  dominion  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
various  kinds  of  Protestantism  have  either  made  less 
efiectual  resistance,  or  made  it,  as  is  shown  by  the  rise 


164 


Vital  Lies 


of  German  exegesis,  in  a  much  more  partial  manner. 
We  are  thus  able  to  compare  the  anti-dogmatic  action  of 
Modernism  with  the  far  greater  and  sometimes  entire 
destruction  of  creeds  which  has  taken  place  outside  the 
Church  of  Rome.  And  if  we  regard  this  further 
destruction  as  representing  the  unimpeded  tendencies 
of  scientific  thought  when  appHed  to  rehgious  creeds, 
we  can  by  such  a  comparison  discover  in  how  far  it  has 
been  checked  by  the  requirements  of  such  CathoUcism 
as  the  Modernists  insist  upon  clinging  to.  For  the 
Modernists,  who  are  heretical  innovators  in  the  eyes  of 
Orthodoxy,  regard  themselves,  and  with  justice,  as 
conservatives  in  opposition  to  Protestantism  and 
Rationalism. 

Thus  returning  to  the  Will-to-BeUeve  or  Will-  (as  it 
often  is)  Not-to-DisbeUeve,  we  shall  understand  its 
action  in  the  case  of  Father  Tyrrell,  by  seeing  where  he 
begins  to  oppose  himself  to  Liberal  Protestants  and 
Rationalists  ;  and  we  shall  recognise  the  nature  of  his 
pragmatic  "  What  it  would  he  better  for  him  to  believe  " 
by  studying  the  questions  upon  which  he  ceases  to 
inquire,  to  analyse  and  to  speculate,  and  continues  to 
believe  because,  as  he  will  tell  us,  life  without  such 
belief  would  be  intolerable  in  his  eyes. 

And  before  beginning  this  demonstration,  which  I 
feel  to  be  in  places  cruelly  hostile,  I  wish  to  express 
(and  that  almost  remorseful  sense  of  my  ruthlessness  is 
itself  an  expression  thereof)  the  very  pecuUar  admira- 


t 


i 


Father  Tyrrell 


tion  and  reverence  with  which  Father  Tyrrell's  pos- 
thumous book  has  fiUed  and  still  fills  me.    After  a 
course  of  Pragmatistic  theory,  with  its  hurry  to  talk 
over ;  its  shirking  of  conclusions  and  shifting  of  re- 
sponsibilities;    its  words  thrown   down  at  random, 
revoked  when  convenient ;  its  twihght  of  suggestion 
and  occasional  Sludge-the-Medium  gesture  of  turning  on 
the  fight  and  showing  that  there's  no  deception ;  after 
the  jumbled  metaphors  of  Dr  Schiller,   the  verbal 
slovenfiness  of  Professor  James ;  after  that  lack  of  logical 
structure  which  makes  even  M.  Bergson's  magnificent 
volumes  fike  caverns,  gfittering  with  gems  and  ores,  but 
viewless  and  without  exit ;  after  aU  that  confusion  of 
genius  and  shoddy,  of  ideafity  and  hustle,  the  satis- 
faction inspired  by  this  book  of  Father  TyrreU's  is  almost 
moral,  and  is  most  certainly  aesthetic.    It  is  fike  the 
satisfaction  felt  in  certain  churches :    the  recognition 
that  all  is  swept  and  garnished,  well  set  ashlar  and 
massive  silver,  fair  finen  and  pure  vessels  ;  everything 
done   and   spoken    without  hurry  or  passion ;    with 
no  audience  save  the  One,  whom  the  Initiate  carries 
in  his  own  consecrated  hands.. 

Such  is  Father  Tyrrell's  posthumous  book.  Not  a 
work  of  original  genius,  or  perhaps  even  original 
research,  but  thought  out  and  set  forth  with  absolute 
definiteness  and  order ;  every  point  made  clear,  every 
objection  forestaUed  and  given  its  due;  the  results 
of  other  men's  work  assimilated  with  lucidity  and 


1 


i66 


Vital  Lies 


orderliness  ;  a  book  which  appeals  to  no  reader,  which 
has  no  hope  of  converting  ;  a  work  for  a  noble  mind's 
own  satisfaction  ;  a  testament  (as  it  proved)  such  as  a 
dpng  man  may  make  for  the  God  he  believes  in,  and  the 
disciples  he  barely  hopes  for ;  and  which,  like  the 
treatise  of  Browning's  "  Grammarian  "  we  may  rever- 
ently place  between  his  hands,  folded  at  last  and  after 
much  strife,  in  peace,  as  we  take  our  last  look  at  him. 


II 


I  do  not  know  to  what  extent,  if  at  all,  Father 
Tyrrell  had  been  an  original  investigator  or  an  original 
speculator  in  any  of  the  studies,  historical,  philo- 
logical, anthropological  and  psychological,  which  aie 
nowadays  deahng  with  the  rehgious  activities  and  their 
manifestations.  But  he  had  learned  the  current 
scientific  methods,  and  assimilated  the  data  and  hypo- 
theses resulting  from  them.  And  he  therefore  came 
to  beUeve  in  the  same  probabihties  and  certainties  as 
the  least  theological  of  his  contemporaries,  and  to 
beheve  as  a  result  of  the  same  processes  of  reasoning 
appHed  to  the  same  data. 

Viewed  historically,  or  genetically,  Rehgion  is  for 
Father  Tyrrell  a  series,  or  rather  a  number  of  compet- 
ing series,  of  more  or  less  co-ordinate  or  more  or  less 
disorderly  syntheses  of  various  products  of  mental 


Father  Tyrrell  167 

activity  :  explanatory,  utiUtarian,  social-discipUnarian, 
8Bsthetic  and  sentimental ;  constantly  changing,  drop- 
ping out  one  item,  adding  another,  in  fact,  evolving 
in  company  and  under  the  pressure  of  those  other 
syntheses  of  human  activities  which  have  gradually 
differentiated  themselves  as  social  organisation,  science, 
philosophy,  crafts  and  trades,  and  art  and  poetry ; 
differentiated  themselves  in  continual  response  to  the 
development  of  man's  mentality,  and  to  the  tasks  which 
he  was  obliged  to  set  himself. 

Beginning  (to  use  Father  Tyrrell's  expression),  as 
pseudo-scientific  in  its  magic  mysticism  and  as  dis- 
cipUnary  on  its  ethical  side,  Rehgion  has  slowly  turned 
from  such  utihtarian  functions  to  ministering,  hke  art 
and  poetry,  hke  science  and  philosophy,  to  man's  dis- 
interested, contemplative  desires ;  and  a  spiritual 
element,  denied  by  Father  Tyrrell  to  the  primitive 
magic-rehgions  has  thus  gradually  been  evolved  in 
rehgion  under  the  bhnd  and  casual  fingering  of  for- 
gotten races  and  unnumbered  generations,  but  also 
under  the  lucid  handhng  of  occasional  men  of  genius, 
philosophers,  poets,  legislators  and  prophets.  Our 
present-day  itself  epitomizes,  in  its  various  contem- 
poraneous grades  of  civihzation,  this  endless  past 
evolution ;  and  even  in  the  most  recently  organized 
rehgions,  the  grossest  utihtarian  magic  elbows  the 
highest  spiritual  contemplation. 

This  is  what  Father  Tyrrell  beheved  to  be  the  past 


i68 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  169 


'E 


of  all  Religion,  and  that  much  of  its  present  which 
represents  its  past.    As  to  the  future  of  ReUgion,  that 
also  will  be  the  result  of  continued  evolution,  and  be 
conditioned  by  the  evolution  of  the  other  branches  of 
human  activity.    Indeed,  Father  Tyrrell  repeatedly 
tells  us  that  the  continued  progress  and  ultimate  sur- 
vival of  rehgion  depends  upon  its  adaptation  to  the 
progress  of  psychology  and  the  science  of  rehgions,  to 
which  it  will  have  to  stand,  he  expUcitly  mentions,  as 
medicine  does  to  the  chemical  and  biological  sciences. 
During  all  this  past  evolution  there  has  been  a  per- 
petual struggle  for  existence  between  various  rehgions 
as  wholes,  and  the  various  elements  of  which  each  of 
them  consisted.     And,  this  competition  continuing  and 
increasing,  there  must  result  that  the  most  vigorously 
adaptive  kind  of  rehgion,  will  not  only  evolve  away  its 
own  deciduous  portions,  but  also,  and  in  consequence, 
oust  aU  its  competing  kindred. 

This  is  how  Father  Tyrrell  conceives  the  future  of 
rehgion,  unless  indeed  (a  possibihty  which  he  does  not 
exclude)  rehgion  should  prove  incapable  of  further  and 
sufficient  evolution  and  become  entirely  extinct. 

So  much  for  what  Father  Tyrrell  beheves  to  be  the 
truth  about  the  genesis  and  development  of  Rehgion. 
His  behef  on  matters  of  historical  detail  is  equally  based 
upon  contemporary  scientific  research,  and  is,  if  possible, 
in  even  more  flagrant  contradiction  with  the  traditions 


of  the  Church  and  the  Church's  dogmas.    He  does  not 
even  discuss  either  the  divine  inspiration  or  the  chrono- 
logical and  personal  authenticity  of  the  various  parts  of 
Scripture,  but  imphcitly  accepts  on  these  points  the 
decisions  of  philological  criticism.     Nor  is  this  all. 
According  to  Father  Tyrrell  the  Founder  of  Chris- 
tianity worked  miracles  only  in  the  ignorant  behef  of 
men  who  did  not  even  distinguish  between  natural  and 
supernatural,    because    they    had    no    conception    of 
nature's  regularity.    Jesus  did  not  rise  from  his  grave 
and   show   himself  to  his  disciples,  but  his  disciples 
thought  that  he  had  thus  risen.    Moreover — and  we 
must  note  that  Father  Tyrrell  is  continually  attacking 
"  Liberal  Protestantism  "  for  the  contrary  opinion — 
moreover,  nothing  can  be  more  absurd  than  to  attribute 
to  the  Founder  of  Christianity  a  mentahty  in  advance 
of  his  time  and  nation  and  class.    Jesus  was  an  un- 
educated and  superstitious  Jew,  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius  ; 
his  mind  was  incapable  of  certain  views,  which  are 
nowadays  attributed  to  him  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
full  of  ideas  which  had  to  be  revised  as  a  result  of  his 
own  death,  and  the  non-fulfilment  of  his  own  prophecies. 
Jesus  was  not  a  moral  innovator,  since  his  morahty 
was  current  both  among  the  Jewish  pietists  and  the 
Gentile  philosophers  of  his  day. 

Furthermore,  the  morahty  which  he  preached  was 
such  as  could  be  apphed  only  to  a  world  on  the  brink 
of  destruction,  and  among  men  preparing  in  penance 


I 


170 


Vital  Lies 


for  an  immediate  Judgment  of  Heaven.  Jesus  was 
preaching  righteousness,  not  for  its  own  sake,  nor  even 
for  the  love  of  God,  but  for  the  sake  of  a  heavenly 
kingdom,  which  was  a  material,  not  a  spiritual  one,  and 
which  was  to  be  inaugurated  by  himself ;  so  that  the 
orthodox  reference  of  his  teaching  to  a  future  spiritual 
existence,  is  as  historically  false  as  its  reference,  by 
Liberal  Protestants,  to  a  subjective  Kingdom  in  the 
Spirit  of  Righteous  Men. 

In  fact.  Father  Tyrrell  not  only  denies  any  historical 
vahdity  to  the  Church's  statements  as  contained  in  its 
creed  and  catechism,  but  even  demonstrates  that  the 
creed  and  the  catechism,  the  whole  body  of  tradi- 
tion and  dogma,  nay,  the  whole  appKcation  of  the 
moral  preaching  of  Jesus  outside  his  own  expectation 
of  an  immediate  end  of  the  world,  were  all  of  them 
subsequent  accretions  historically  and  psychologically 
exphcable  (and  often  philologically  demonstrable)  by 
the  nonfulfilment  of  the  very  expectations  which 
Jesus  had  come  to  prophecy,  and  the  adaptation  of 
his  predictions  and  precepts  to  totally  different  times, 
circumstances  and  modes  of  thought. 


Ill 


But  in  Father  Tyrrell's  orderly  and  homogeneous 
structure  of  historical,  psychological,  and  philological 


*; 


♦ 


# 


V 


Father  Tyrrell  171 

convictions,  there  occasionally  appear  lapses  of  logical 
continuity  and  changes  of  intellectual  orientation, 
interruptions,  in  fact,  which  suggest  the  lurking  presence 
of  heterogeneous  and  irreducible  elements.  Of  such 
unexpected  interruptions  the  first  to  awaken  suspicion 
is  that,  while  ostensibly  regarding  Rehgion  as  a  human 
product,  exphcable  by  human  needs  (of  which  more 
anon)  and  subject  to  human  development.  Father 
Tjorell  should  nevertheless  impUcitly  Hmit  reUgion  to 
Christianity  and  expend  much  argument  in  hmiting 
Christianity  to  Cathohcism.  Whereas,  the  biologist 
follows  up  the  various  species  derived  from  a  common 
type,  and  considers  their  various  adaptation  to  circum- 
stances. Father  T5n:rell,  on  the  contrary,  passes  over  the 
other  great  developments  of  original  rehgious  activities, 
Shintoism,  Buddhism,  and  Islam,  as  if  they  had  atro- 
phied and  perished ;  and  he  dismisses  the  suggestion 
of  a  possible  fusion  between  Cathohcism  and  other 
creeds  from  a  biological  objection  against  crossing  of 
genera,  an  analogy  which  (if  I  may  forestall  other 
questions)  might  surely  have  been  urged  against  the 
hybridization  of  human  rehgious  thought  by  trans- 
cendental revelation. 

The  non-Christian  rehgions  are,  therefore,  left  out  of 
discussion.  As  regards  Protestantism,  on  the  other 
hand,  Father  Tyrrell's  book  (like  M.  Loisy's  famous 
one)  is  directed,  not  so  much  at  freeing  Cathohcism  from 
scientifically  untenable  doctrines,  as  at  showing  that 


» 


-  itmi 


iginmiici 


172 


Vital  Lies 


"  Liberal  Protestantism,"  with  its  substitution  of  the 
ethical  elements  for  the  sacramental  and  transcendental 
ones,  so  far  falls  short  of  being  the  true  embodiment 
of  the  Rehgious  Idea. 

This  Rehgious  "Idea,"  by  which  Father  Tyrrell 
means  not  only  (in  metaphysical  sense)  the  adequate 
fulfilment  of  a  typical  function,  but  also  something  Hke 
M.  Bergson's  creative-evolutive  impulse,  this  Rehgious 
**  Idea  "  will  play  the  chief  part  in  the  following  pages, 
and  it  is  therefore  well  to  try  and  grasp  its  (so  far  as 
graspable)  meaning.    The   Rehgious    "Idea,"  there- 
fore, deals  with  the  union  of  the  Spirit  of  Man  with  the 
Divinity.    And  the  various  rehgions  must  be  valued, 
from  the  rehgious  point  of  view,  according  to  the  degree 
in  which  they  embody  this  "  Idea,"  by  achieving,  or 
tending  to  achieve,  this  union. 

Having  got  so  far,  we  must  pause  and  examine 
what  this  definition  may  mean,  for,  in  its  apparent 
simphcity,  it  is  susceptible  of  more  than  one  inter- 
pretation, and  of  two  at  least  which  are  divergent. 

From  the  standpoint,  both  of  psychology  and  of  the 
comparative  study  of  rehgions,  Rehgion  can  be  defined 
as  that  which  connects  Man  with  the  Divinity.  From 
the  anthropological  and  comparative  mythological 
point  of  view,  this  means  that  the  particular  group 
of  doctrines  and  practices  studied  by  these  sciences  is 
intended,  is  supposed,  to  put  Man  into  such  connection 
with  the  Divinity ;  similarly,  magic  can  be  defined  as 


Father  Tyrrell  173 

the  group  of  doctrines  and  practices  enabhng  Man  to 
deal  with  the  mystically  embodied  powers  of  Nature ; 
that  is  to  say,  magic  is  intended  to  do  this.  Whether 
reUgion  or  magic  does  do  either  of  these  things  except 
in  the  opinion  of  its  votaries  is  a  question  which  the 
*'  science  of  rehgions  "  does  not  enter  upon.  Turning 
to  the  psychological  standpoint,  we  may  also  retain 
that  definition  of  rehgion  :  Rehgion  is  what  brings  Man 
in  connection  with  the  Divinity.  It  does  so,  says 
psychology,  as  Art  brings  Man  in  connection  with  the 
Beautiful  or  Science  in  connection  with  Knowledge : 
in  all  three  cases,  we  have  transformed  into  a  noun, 
objective  to  the  verb  connect,  what  is  itself  a  verb,  "  to 
conceive  "  or  "  to  desire,"  and  what  really  does  the 
connecting  with  the  predicate  Divinity,  Beauty  or 
Knowledge.  Moreover,  just  as  Psychology  analyses 
Beauty  into  the  quality  of  being  beautiful  or  Righteous- 
ness into  the  quality  of  being  righteous,  so  it  analyses 
divineness  into  the  quality  of  being  divine,  and  shows 
us  the  successive  operations  by  which  such  "  divineness  " 
is  turned  into  "  divinity  "  and  (always  in  men's  mind), 
from  divinity  into  a  God,  and  finally  God. 

In  this  sense  anthropology  on  the  one  hand,  and 
psychology  on  the  other,  can,  and  do,  accept  Father 
Tyrrell's  definition  of  Rehgion. 

But  this  is  not  what  Father  Tyrrell  means  by  that 
formula.  Father  Tyrrell  means  that  Rehgion,  quite 
apart  from  what  any  science  thinks  on  the  subject, 


V 


'Vl 


174 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  175 


does  bring  man  into  connection  with  the  Divinity. 
And  he  means  that  the  Divinity,  however  much  it  may, 
as  psychology  tells  us,  exist  in  the  mind  of  Man  as  a 
human  idea,  does  exist,  in  some  manner  transcending 
all  human  conception,  outside  the  mind  of  Man.  The 
Divinity  (or  Spirit,  as  he  often  calls  it)  is  not  in  this 
sense  a  human  thought  at  all ;  it  is  an  object  of  human 
experience  irreducible  to  mere  subjective  existence : 
the  divinity  is  not  the  thought,  which  can  become  an 
obsession,  of  the  divine ;  it  is  a  Spirit,  which  can  enter 
into  man  by  a  process  wholly  transcending  any  psycho- 
logical or  rational  description,  a  spirit  by  which  Man 
can  be  not  obsessed,  but  possessed. 


IV 


This  brings  us  to  another  of  those  interruptions, 
as  I  have  called  them,  of  the  sequence  and  homo- 
geneousness  of  Father  TyrelPs  scientific  thought- 
interruptions,  as  the  reader  will  soon  recognize,  them- 
selves representing  a  hidden  continuity,  and  which, 
if  we  follow  their  seemingly  disconnected  reappearance, 
will  help  us  to  penetrate  into  the  underlying  unity  of 
what  is  in  Father  Tyrrell's  mind.  Father  Tyrrell's 
view  of  the  Objectivity  of  Grod  will  lead  us  to  his  view 
of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  and  the  unique  Quality  of 
Catholicism ;   and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  lead  us 


back  to  his  conception  of  Rehgious  Ideas,  thence 
to  his  conception  of  Ideas  as  such,  and  thus  close  the 
circle. 

I  have  already  summed  up  Father  Tyrrell's  views 
as  to  the  historical,  and  so  to  speak  historically  con- 
ditional nature  of  the  "  Man  Jesus."  Indeed,  one  of 
his  chief  quarrels  with  "Liberal  Protestantism"  is 
the  tendency,  with  which  he  credits  it,  to  explain 
away  Christ's  sayings  and  beUefs  in  order  to  make 
them  acceptable  to  modern  thought.  Father  Tyrrell 
will  have  none  of  this  kind  of  modernizing  in  the  teeth 
of  historical  evidence  and  probability.  The  "  Man 
Jesus,"  he  repeatedly  tells  us,  had  and  could  have 
only  the  mentality  of  his  particular  time  and  nation ; 
an  enormous  proportion  of  his  conceptions  and  behefs, 
and  first  and  foremost  his  notion  of  an  immediate  end 
of  the  world  and  an  ensuing  material  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  must  be  put  to  the  account  of  that  unclarified 
mentality  of  his  day  and  country.  Such  being  the 
case,  it  becomes  necessary  to  discriminate  between 
what  Jesus  thought  and  said  inasmuch  as  a  **  man  " 
— a  "  superstitious,"  almost  a  "  fanatical "  man  of 
unclear,  crass  ideas — and  what  Jesus  thought  and 
said  inasmuch  as  an  incarnation  of  the  Divinity.  The 
"Man  Jesus"  could,  did,  and  must  make  erroneous 
statements  and  teach  exaggerated  behaviour,  but  the 
Deity  (since  Father  Tyrrell  relegates  as  magical 
mythology  the  Old  Testament  stories  of  False  Prophets 


176 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  177 


erroneously  inspired  by  that  very  Jehovah  whom  the 
"  Man  Jesus  "  beheved  in)— the  Deity  could  evidently 
only  reveal  truth ;  and  truth  presumably  such  as 
could  be  obtained  only  through  such  revelation. 
Now,  of  all  the  things  which  Jesus  said,  and  among 
which  we  must  thus  discriminate  between  human 
error  and  revealed  truth,  there  is  one  which  Father 
Tyrrell  accepts  as  essentially  of  the  latter  kind— namely, 
the  belief  (quite  analogous  to  that  in  the  end  of  the 
world  and  the  material  Kingdom  of  Heaven)  of  Jesus 
in  his  own  divine  nature  and  in  the  divine  origin  of 
his  message.  In  other  words,  Father  Tjrrell  accepts 
the  fact  of  a  transcendental  revelation  on  the  testi- 
mony of  a  person  who  in  his  human  character  was 
likely  to  have  confused  ideas  on  this  especial  subject ; 
and  also  on  the  corroborative  statement  of  those 
disciples  and  of  that  early  Tradition  which,  we  have 
been  told,  were  not  only  full  of  the  grossest  hteral- 
ness,  but  also  of  irremediably  superstitious  habits  of 
mind. 

This  is  a  strange  contradiction.  But,  in  reaUty, 
as  we  shall  discover  later  on,  the  real  witness  to  Christ's 
Divine  Nature  and  Mission  is  not  the  word  of  Jesus 
or  the  tradition  of  the  Church,  themselves  hable  to 
criticism  and  often  to  rejection.  The  Testimony  is 
in  Father  Tyrrell  himself ;  and  it  is  the  testimony  of 
his  Will,  or  Need,  to  believe. 


Guided  by  Anthropology,  by  comparative  Mythology, 
and  by  Psychology  (let  alone  other  scientific  studies) 
Father  TyrreU  has  therefore  presented  us  with  an 
evolutional  scheme  where  the  rehgious  function  plays 
a  part  corresponding  to  that  of  the  scientific  function  ; 
the  truths  needful  for  man's  weKare  being,  in  both 
cases,  originally  overlaid  by  all  manner  of  human  errors, 
through   which,  by   a   slow   evolution,  those   truths' 
laboriously  make  their  way,  only  partiaUy  emerged 
in  our  own  day,  and  perhaps  never  destined  to  emerge 
completely  from  that  obscuring  and  distorting  accre- 
tion of  misunderstanding.     But  note  the  difference ! 
Whereas  in  the  case  of  science  the  needful  knowledge 
of  nature  is  attained  (so  far  as  it  goes)  by  merely 
human  agency  ;  the  equaUy  needful  (for  if  not  needful 
where  would  be  rehgion  ?)  knowledge  of  the  Divine  is 
suddenly  intercalated  in   the  human  evolution,  and 
what  is  more,  intercalated  by  a  transcendental  revela- 
tion  which,  inserted  into  inadequate  human  inteUi- 
gence,  becomes   immediately  overlaid  and  distorted 
by    the    grossest    misapprehensions,    even    on    the 
part   of   the    very   Person    to    whom    and   through 
whom  this  necessary  revelation  is  made  for  Man's 
benefit.    In  other  words,  while  what  we  mean  by 
Nature,   however   profitable  the  knowledge   thereof. 


M 


178 


Vital  Lies 


has    revealed     itself     piecemeal     since    the     begin- 
ning  of   human    thought,   and  continued   to  reveal 
itself    without   much    hope    of    any   eventual    com- 
plete  revelation,    the   object   of   the   rehgious   need 
of  man,  namely,  the   pre-existent,  eternal,    Infinite 
and  Absolute,  is  hurried,  by  a  sense  of  man's  dire 
need,  to  attempted  self-revelation  in  the  year  753  of 
the  Building  of  Rome,  in  the  province  of  Judsea  and 
through  the  miraculous  mediation  (we  might  almost 
say  mediumship)   of  an  ignorant   and  superstitious 
Jewish  pietist,  whose  mind  is,  if  possible,  more  in- 
capable of  grasping  the  divine  reahty  than  that  of 
mankind  as  a  whole,  and  of  his  contemporaries  in  par- 
ticular.    That  such  should  be  the  case  has  hitherto 
been  dealt  with,  perhaps  wisely,  as  a  mystery.     But 
to  Father's  TyrreU's   scientific,    eminently  historical 
mind,  the  mystery  admits  of  an  explanation. 

According  to  him  the  very  choice  for  this  trans- 
cendental revelation  of  a  historical  moment  rife  with 
the  clogging  superstitions  of  "  pre-rehgious,  pseudo- 
scientific"  magical  utihtarianism  and  hterahiess, 
explains  hkewise  the  choice  of  a  mediator  who,  as  a 
human  personahty,  was  fitted  to  cater  to  the  super- 
stitions of  his  times  by  his  sincere  and  stirring  behef 
in  an  immediate  destruction  of  the  world  and  advent 
of  a  by-no-means  metaphysical  or  subjective  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  And  the  Divinity's  choice  (for  Father 
TyrreU  frequently  speaks  of  the  Divinity  as  amenable 


y 


Father  Tyrrell  179 

to  motives)  of  such  a  jumble  of  human  error  for  its 
own  revelation,  is  explained  to  Father  Tyrrell's  very 
up-to-date  (and  distinctly  Bergsonian)  psychology,  by 
the  advantage  of  transcendental  truth  being  vehicled 
(as  colours  are  vehicled  by  oU  or  white  of  egg)  into 
the  human  soul,  not  by  the  hard  and  fast  (and  fre- 
quently erroneous)  modus  operandi  of  definite  ideas, 
but  by  that  of  legends  and  metaphors,  whereof  every 
man  and  every  generation  could  take,  or  not,  the 
"spiritual  essence,"  and  about  which  successive  or  veiy 
different  ages  and  peoples  might  have  Kved  in  brotherly 
community  of  faith,  had  it  not  been  for  the  presump- 
tuous interference  of  the  human  reason. 

The  Divinity,  in  other  words,  had  forestaUed  the 
Modernist  theory  of  the  value  of  symbolism. 


VI 

The  value  of  symbolism  is  indeed  one  of  the  oldest 
discoveries  of  theological  thought,  for  symbols  are  the 
natural  resort  of  dogmatism  whenever  one  of  its 
assertions  can  no  longer  be  easily  maintained,  and  yet, 
owing  to  the  necessary  sohdarity  of  dogmatic  teaching,' 
cannot  be  rejected  or  abandoned  :  the  historical  account 
of  the  stopping  of  the  sun,  or  of  the  creation  of  the 
world,  once  caught  in  the  clutches  of  scientific  dis- 
cussion, disembodied  itself  into  symbol,  and  vanished, 


!l 


1 80 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  181 


BO  to  speak,  into  a  fourth  dimension  of  thought ;  the 
dimension  where,  as  we  know,  ghosts  find  a  convement 
retreat  It  is  in  this  way  that  Modernism  has  had  to 
make  use  of  symboUsm.  But  to  such  (may  we  caU  it  ?) 
value  of  convenimce  (felt  but  never  put  mto  words  by 
those  who  feel  it  most),  there  ha^  been  added  of  late 
years  another  and  more  scientific  appreciation  of  the 

uses  of  symbols. 

Psychology  has  taught  us  that  the  contents  of  one 
mind  does  not  mirror  itself  (as  we  see  rooms  and  land- 
scapes and  ourselves  mirrored  in  the  eye  of  our  neigh- 
bour)   with  mechanical  and   passive  correctness  m 
another  mind ;    that,  on  the  contrary,  words  merely 
stir  the  impressions  abeady  stored  up  in  their  hearer, 
and  turn  on  processes  akeady  f  amiUar ;   so  that  the 
word  produces  a  change,  but  a  change  conditioned  and 
Umited  by  the  residue  of  all  previous  changes.    Hence 
the  assimilation  of  a  word  or  sentence  impUes  its  m- 
terpretation,  and  no  one  can  interpret  the  unknomi 
save  into  what  he  knows  akeady.    This  view  of  words 
and  their  inodm  operandi  which  is  now  current  com 
among  educated  people,  explains,  and  is  explained  by 
(its  having  arisen  at  aU)  the  inevitable  change  m  the 
meaning  of  the  same  words  and  sentences  when  passing 
from  individual  to  individual,  and  from  generation  to 
generation.    We  know,  for  instance,  that  so  simple  a 
piece  of  Uterature  as  a  page  of  Bradshaw  "  means ' 
something  different  to  the  traveller  who  has  seen  the 


places  registered  therein,  and  the  clerk  of  Messrs  Cook, 
who  seeks  in  it  only  connections  of  trains.    We  know 
that  Virgil's  verse  meant  something  different  to  Dante 
from  what  it  could  mean  to  Horace  ;  and,  if  we  recon- 
struct Dante's  mental  possibihties  by  reference  to 
his  contemporary   philosophy  and  pohtics,   we  also 
know  that  Dante's  own  verse  meant  something  quite 
difierent    to    him,    the    dogmatic    church-man    and 
aristocratic  authoritarian,  from  what  it  meant  when  it 
incited  Gioberti  and  Mazzini  and  Garibaldi  towards  a 
unified  ItaUan  democracy.    In  fact,  we  are  learning  to 
recognize  that  the  poets  who  five  through  the  ages  are 
also  those  to  whom  each  age  gives  a  new  lease  of  Ufe 
by  fixing  its  attention  upon  items  different  from  those 
which  interested  its  predecessors,  and  by  associating 
with  whatever  of  the  poet's  sayings  it  thus  happened 
to  focus,  the  thoughts  and  feehngs  most  vivid  in  itself, 
but   often   most   foreign   to   the   poet.      From   this 
recognition  of  the  changing  mental  syntheses  produced 
by  poetry  and  Ukewise  by  much  philosophic  precept, 
it  is  an  easy  step  to  recognition  of  the  symboHcal  value 
of  rehgious  teachings.    And  this  recognition  includes 
not  merely  that  the  same  form  of  words,  the  same 
definition,    commandment,    or    narrative    wiU    take 
different  connotations  and  appHcations  according  to  the 
hearer,  but  also  that  this  fluctuation  in  the  meaning, 
united  with  stabihty  in  the  wording  or  imagery,  wiU 
enable  such  rehgious  formulae  to  five  on,  Hke  the  poet's, 


l82 


Vital  Lies 


through  the  centuries  with  the  revived  and  increasing 
power  due  at  once  to  adaptation  and  to  stability.  For 
a  passage  of  Virgil  or  Dante,  a  sentence  of  Greek 
philosophy  ("  man  is  the  measure  "  or  "  know  thyself  "), 
a  verse  of  the  Bible,  Uve  through  the  ages  partly 
because  they  have  an  intrinsic  quaUty  which  makes 
them  eternally  appHcable,  and  partly  because  they 
admit  of  that  appHcation  being  altered  with  each  mind 
that  assimilates  them ;  but  above  all,  they  Uve,  they 
exist,  because  they  remain  outwardly  unchanged,  and 
because  this  unchanged  form  acquires  the  accumulated 
imperative  of  habit. 

The  power  on  our  emotion  remains  the  same,  while 
the  intellectual  contents  alters  and  renews  itself  :  and 
thus  the  authority  of  different  monarchs  and  different 
monarchies  of  our  soul  Uves  on  uninterrupted  through 
all  change,  thanks  to  the  traditional  royalty  of  the  word 
which  never  dies.  Nay,  it  may  happen  that  our  own 
ideas,  clearly  recognized  as  ours,  react  upon  ourselves 
with  increased  efficacy  if  we  express  them  in  one  of  those 
quotations  which  have  stirred  variously  the  hearts  of 
generations  :  sunt  lachrymcB  rerum ;  or,  amcyr  cVa  nidlo 
anuUo  amar  perdona  ;  nay,  even  a  phrase  "  God's  in  His 
Heaven,  alVs  right  in  the  world"  written  almost  during 
our  own  hfetime  by  Browning,  whom  we  ourselves  have 
known !  And  the  person  whose  Ufe  has  been  most 
absolutely  untouched  by  reUgious  teachings  and 
practices,  to  whom  a  knowledge  of  Christianity  has  come 


Father  Tyrrell  183 


like  that  of  Uterature  and  art  and  history,  may  feel 
that  his  poor  individual  thought,  without  stabiUty 
or  authority  of  its  own,  can  borrow  the  power  of  up- 
Ufting  our  head,  or  of  bending  our  knees — a  power  more 
irresistible  even  than  that  of  artistic  form — if  only  it 
be  expressed  in  the  words  which  have  been  prayed  and 
sung  for  eighteen  centuries  or  in  the  images  which  exist 
equally  in  Giotto  or  Michelangelo's  frescoes  and  in  any 
wayside  crucifix,  or  penny  coloured  print  of  the  Via 
Crucis. 

How  much  more  is  this  the  case  when  the  symbol  is 
not  merely  read  or  remembered,  but  repeated  with 
every  circumstance  of  solemnity  and  pathos  ;  when  it  is 
enacted  in  a  ritual  (the  metaphor  of  the  bread  and  wine 
translated  into  Uteral  concreteness,  for  instance),  where 
we  are  ourselves  the  actors,  or  handed  over  to  the 
behever  (as  in  devotional  meditations,  like  those  of  St 
Ignatius),  with  the  express  command  that  he  shall 
reahse  its  every  detail  with  his  own  dramatic 
imagination  ? 

The  great  reUgions  of  the  world  have  thus  become 
a  marveUous  Hving  organism  of  symbols  wherein  the 
new  is  grafted  on  the  old,  where  change  of  essence 
is  hidden  under  unchangeable  appearance,  where 
accumulated  primaeval  emotions  and  imperatives 
exchange  quite  unperceived  subject  and,  so  to  speak, 
substance ;  and  thanks  to  which,  men  Uke  M.  Loisy 
and  Father  Tyrrell  may  still  imagine  themselves  to  be 


I 


184 


Vital  Lies 


in  direct  traditional  connection  with  St  Paul  St  Tn. 
and  the  Early  Father,   i.*     ■        ,  '  ^' ''°""' 

-c^rtrzirare^r  -^■- 

«o..  but  positive  addiC':rL;:2tt:" 

workings  of  the  human  mind.  '^°^^'^''  of  the 


VII 

But  psychology,   individual   and   racial    A 
-^ely  e^anune  and  demonstrate     TiJZn'^oi 

l^torical  Itetir:  ^'^^Tr  ^^^^ 
particular  meaning.  howeCer  li^tl^  a^i  d^ 
to  every  symbol,  so  also  every  symM  T  , 

enough  back  has  h^  ,„  •  7,^^^^  "^  ^e  go  far 
Moreover  Psvcr.        ?  °"^"'''  """^  "^^'''l  ^^^ning 

but  r^rt  °^„?;7  r "- 1^  *^e  ^4: 

andpracticai;:e.l:'^; t"-^^^^^^ 

-reasing  dyn'amo.genetr;i;rtr  Ts?  "' t " 

the  total  andirreducLediv^g^TcTtothei?'"'."  "^ 

to  that  symbol  at  th.      r^*"'*  ""  '^«  »<l«as  attached 

mbol  at  the  extreme  ends  of  its  evolution. 


Father  Tyrrell  1 8  5 


And  even  if  psychology  did  not  assure  us  that  this  must 
be  the  case,  and  ecclesiastical  history  with  its  definitions 
and  re-definitions  did  not  prove  it  enough,  an  incom- 
parable proof  would  be  afforded  by  the  writings  of  the 
Modernists  and  their  condemnation  in  the  famous 
EncycUcal  Pascendi. 

St  Paul  and  St  John  did  not,  could  not,  mean  really 
the  same  things  as  Father  Tyrrell  and  M.  Loisy  ;  the 
"  Man  Jesus  "  himself.  Father  Tyrrell  does  not  hesitate 
to  say,  could  not,  in  so  far  as  a  historical  personage, 
mean  the  same  thing  ;— indeed  one  can  scarcely  bear  the 
thought  of  what  Jesus  would  have  felt  if,  in  the  hours 
on  the  cross,  he  had  learned  on  irrecusable  authority, 
that  the  end  of  the  world  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
were  not  at  hand,  and  that  these  things  must  be  under- 
stood (to  use  the  Apologetic  expression)  not  facie  ad 
faciem,  but  per  specula  et  aenigmata. 

Father  Tyrrell's  recourse  to  symboHsm  is  logical  so 
long  as  we  identify  the  unchanging  contents  of  the 
symbol  with  some  human  thought,  however  vague ; 
some,  however  highly  emotional,  human  conception 
of  an  aim  in  fife,  or  an  order  of  the  Universe.  But  if 
we  continue  this  argument  in  favour  of  symbohsm,  it 
finally  abuts  not  only  at  Christ,  but  at  the  Divinity 
whom  Christ  revealed.  And  we  then  find  ourselves  in 
the  presence  of  a  Divinity  who,  subjected  to  alternatives 
and  preferences  (Father  Tyrrell  distinctly  speaks  of  the 
Divinity  as  induced  to  the  Christian  revelation  by  over- 


I 


1 86 


Vital  Lies 


flowing  of  the  cup  of  man's  misery  and  the  misdeeds  of 
the  Powers    of   Evil),  obliged  to  accept  such  poor 
symbolic  means  for  his  revelation,  is  itself  but  a  larger 
and  vaguer  kind  of  human  being,  conditioned  by  its 
own  nature  and  by  surrounding  circumstances ;    not 
the  real,  the  objective  author  of  the  revelation,  but 
the  imagined  author  thereof,  in  other  words  a  divinity 
which  is  a  purely  human  conception,  revelation  and  all 
—just  one  of  those  human  notions  of  which  the  study  of 
symbols  has  shown  us  the  genesis  and  transformations. 
Now  this  is  exactly  what  the  rationalist  thinker, 
following  along  Father  Tyrrell's  scientific  Unes,  would 
arrive   at.     The   Christian   God,    hke   the  Christian 
Christ,  like  the  legends  and  symbols,  is  himself  a  mere 
symbol ;   crudely  anthropomorphic  in  primitive  times, 
more  and  more  hazy,  negative,  so  to  speak,  residual,  as 
man's  thought  progresses  and  gradually  shuffles  off  its 
anthropocentric  explanation   of  the  universe;    it  is 
we  who  have  made  this  Divinity,  not  this  Divinity  that 
has  made  us.     But  for  Father  Tyrrell  the  Divinity  at 
the  bottom  of  Christian  revelation  is  the  one  who  has 
made  us,  not  the  one  whom  we  have  made,  however 
much  we  have  botched  and  boggled  His  image.    He  (and 
no  longer  U)  is  an  Objective  Spiritual  Entity  which,  in 
some  transcendent  but  absolutely  objective  manner,  has 
entered  into  the  "  Man  Jesus  "  and  told  him  things 
such  as  could  not  otherwise  have  been  known ;  things 
which   are   eternally   true,    however   erroneous    and 


Father  Tyrrell  187 


deciduous  the  symbols  wherein,  first  and  foremost  by 
Jesus  himself,  they  have  been  conveyed  to  mankind. 

For  this  logical  difficulty  Father  Tyrrell  has  prepared 
by  pointing  out  the  usefulness  of  symbols  in  a  branch  of 
thought,  namely  the  scientific,  which  is  admitted  to 
approximate  moie  and  more  to  a  perhaps  never  com- 
pletely attainable  truth.    And  it  is,  indeed,  undeniable 
that  wherever  we  do  not  know,  or  do  not  yet  know,  the 
whole  of  our  subject,  it  is  wise  to  avoid  premature 
definitions  which  might  mislead,  and  substitute  sym- 
bolic expressions  committing  us,  as  for  intsance  the 
word  Force  as  scientifically  employed,  to  the  smallest 
number    of    connotations;     thus    Herbert    Spencer 
showed  more  prudence  than  usual  in  referring  not 
to  God  but  to  the  Unknowable,  and  leaving  his  readers  to 
identify  the  two  if  so  disposed.    In  this  manner  one 
can   understand  that   theological  ideas   might  have 
been  best  promulgated  in  metaphysical  formulae,  or, 
better  still,  in,  say,  algebraic  symbols.     But  that  is 
the  exact  reverse  of  what  has  happened;   and  the 
symboKsm  in  which  transcendental  "  ideas  "  have  been 
conveyed  by  the  Church  and  its  founders,  is  the  kind 
which  says  not  less,  but  a  great  deal  more,  than  is 
necessary;     it   is    the    symboHsm    which    increasing 
connotations  and  associated  notions  increases  probable 
misunderstanding    instead    of    checking    it.    If    the 
Powers  Above  had  intended  to  diminish  man's  mis- 
taken views  (and  consequent  quarrels)  about  them- 


i88 


Vital  Lies 


selves,  they  (for  I  do  not  wish  to  identify  the  pro- 
blematic  X    postulated  by  my  argument   with    the 
Divinity  of  Father  Tyrrell's  worship),  They  could  not 
have  hit  upon   a  worse  plan    than    employing    the 
symbolism  of  Scripture  and  Scripture's  commentators. 
That  sort  of  symbolism  is  not  calculated  to  make  men 
understand  that  they  do  not  understand  more  than 
they  actually  do  ;  and  the  historical  result  has  shown  it. 
So  that  one  has  a  right  to  wonder  why,  knowing  that 
each  century  is  bound  to  symbolize  truth  in  a  way 
different  from  other  centuries,  the  "  Spirit "  should 
have  chosen  to  symboUze  once  for  all,  and  that  in  a 
particularly   materiaUstic   and   metaphor-loving   race 
and  country,  and  through  a  particularly  (in  so  far  as 
himself  not  a  symbol)  hteral-minded  person,  instead  of 
going  to  the  expense  of  furnishing  as  science  does  a  fresh 
and  less  inadequate  symbol  to  suit  each  age.    Why  one 
Christ  only,  and  only  one  direct  revelation  ?     Of  course, 
Father  Tyrrell's  theory  of  symbols  would  answer  (and 
Father  Tyrrell  has  said  so  in  scarcely  less  expUcit 
terms)  that  symbols  are  improved  by  the  puUing  about, 
that  they  work  themselves  deeper  in.     But  (which 
Father  Tyrrell  seems  to  overlook)  they  at  the  same 
time  work  themselves,  at  the  other  end,  further  out : 
the  material  imagery  and  hteral  interpretations  raise 
disbelief  after  a  time,  and  the  end  of  the  world  which 
has  not  come  ceases,  after  some  repetition  of  its  not 
coming,  to  have  its  full  effect. 


I 


I"* 


Father  Tyrrell  189 


But  the  Modernist  theory  of  intentional  symbolism 
is  either  based  upon  the  habit  of  our  own  ignorant  and 
blundering  mankind,  groping  its  way  under  colossal 
difficulties,  and  in  whose  image  we  allow  ourselves 
(symbolically)  to  conceive  the  *'  Spirit "  which  is 
neither  human  nor  conditioned.  Or  else  (and  this 
is,  I  think,  more  probably  the  case),  this  theory  of 
rehgious  symbolism  is  merely  one  of  the  various  in- 
consequences of  Father  Tyrrell's  mode  of  thought, 
started  on  plain  rationalistic  lines,  and,  ever  and  anon, 
running  against  that  hidden  centre  of  habitual  and 
beloved  behefs,  and  against  the  need  to  beheve  in 
them  which  he  finds  in  himself. 

Such  is,  roughly,  the  scheme  of  Father  Tyrrell's 
behefs,  and  I  think  I  am  correct  in  saying  that,  even 
as  according  to  them  the  Transcendental  grafts  itself 
miraculously  onto  the  historical,  so  similarly,  but 
vice  versa,  in  the  mind  of  Modernists,  the  historical, 
the  casual  and  analytical,  grafts  itself  with  equally 
confusing  effect,  on  the  mystical:  the  "it  seems" 
on  the  *'  it  must  have  seemed." 


VIII 

Leaving  behind  us  the  uses,  divine  as  well  as 
human,  of  Symbolism,  we  will  proceed,  penetrate 
if  we    can,    to   the  something  thus  symbohzed  for 


^T3B5S£^i^-^ir~!T" 


igo 


Vital  Lies 


the  greater  glory  of  Grod  or  the  greater  convenience 
of  Man. 

This  something  persisting  intact,  much  hke  Weiss- 
mann's  imperishable  Germ-Plasm  through  the  genera- 
tions of  mortal  bodies,  and  vehicled  by  those  ever- 
changing  Uteral  and  symboKcal  interpretations  which 
have  Uved  in  virtue  of  that  vital  essence  they  have 
debased  and  endangered,  this  virtuous  and  victorious 
something  attracting  errors  to  its  service  and  discard- 
ing them,  is  what  Father  Tyrrell  calls  the  Religious 
Idea. 

Let  us  try  and  grasp  as  much  of  it  as  we  can,  that 
much  of  it  which  is  conceptual.  The  non-conceptual 
part,  on  which  Father  Tyrrell  never  fails  to  insist, 
we  may,  or  may  not,  succeed  in  approaching  further 
on  in  our  inquiry. 

The  ReUgious  Idea,  as  it  is  commonly  used  in  modem 
times,  is,  in  point  of  fact,  a  group  of  ideas,  by  no  means 
logically  inseparable  from  one  another ; — a  group, 
moreover,  which  I  find  it  convenient  to  separate  into 
two  subgroups,  the  philosophical  and  the  sacramental. 
I  call  the  first  group  philosophical,  because  its  com- 
ponent ideas  refer  to  a  view  of  Man's  place  in  the 
Universe  and  Man's  destinies,  a  WeUamchauung  in 
the  sense  of  those  given  us  independent  of  rehgion 
by  various  philosophers.  This  religious  philosopher 
or  religious  Weltanschauung  can  be  described  as 
follows  :   The  life  of  Man  upon  this  earth  is  due  to  a 


If 


j 


Father  Tyrrell  191 

Divinity,  who  is  infinite,  eternal  (hence  unconditioned 
and  all-powerful),  also  absolutely  just  and  merciful, 
indeed,  the  fountain  of  all  that  is  known  by  men  as 
goodness.  For  some  inexpHcable  reason  this  abso- 
lutely Good,  Infinite,  and  Eternal  is  crossed  in  its  own 
designs  (or  crosses  its  own  designs)  by  the  presence 
of  what  Man  knows  as  Suffering  and  Sin.  But  this 
contradiction  is  set  right  by  the  divine  arrangement 
of  an  after-fife  in  which  suffering  is  compensated, 
and  sin  either  obfiterated,  if  we  have  arrived  at  a 
humanitarian  stage  in  the  interpretation  of  symbols, 
or  if  we  are  in  a  previous  stage — ^let  us  say  the  Dante 
or  Pascal  stage — thoroughly  well,  indeed  eternally, 
punished.  The  centre  of  this  half  of  the  "  ReHgious 
Idea  "  is  therefore  the  Sub-Idea  that  there  is  an  after- 
life in  which  everything  will  he  set  right :  Man  has  but 
a  few  miserable  years  wherein  to  be  just,  but,  as  Pascal 
remarked,  "  Dieu  a  I'eternit^."  .  .  . 

The  other  half  of  the  "  Refigious  Idea  "  is  what  I 
have  ventured  to  call  the  sacramental^  which  others 
might  perhaps  have  called  the  mystical.  Its  centre  is 
the  notion  of  direct  and  objective  conmiunication  during 
this  fife  between  the  Divinity  and  Man  :  by  prayer, 
divine  possession,  and  revelation,  more  particularly 
by  certain  material  practices  of  which  the  principal  is  a 
sacrificial  act,  partaken  in  by  lay  beUevers  as  well  as 
by  the  consecrated  priest. 

Such  are  those  two  parts  of  the  refigious  idea  which 


192 


Vital  Lies 


can  be  reduced  to  human  concepts,  as  distinguished 
from  another  part,  or,  rather,  another  side,  of  which 
more  anon. 

Kational  examination  can  be  appUed  to  this  con- 
ceptual nucleus  (or  double  nucleus)  of  the  Keligious 
**  Idea  "  as  similar  examination  is  applied  by  Father 
Tyrrell  to  the  dogmas  and  S3nnbols  in  which  this 
"  Idea "  has  travelled  across  the  centuries,  and  to 
the  gospel  narratives,  the  scripture  texts,  in  which 
the  "  Idea "  makes  its  first  appearance  in  a  form 
singularly  suitable  (as  Father  Tyrrell  points  out)  to 
the  mentaUty  of  those  times  and  places,  but  requiring 
a  great  deal  of  interpretation  and  even  omission, 
before  it  is  suitable  to  ours.  This  apphcation  of 
secular  criticism  has  been  made,  time  after  time,  and 
the  result  has  been  roughly  as  follows :  There  is  in 
all  this  Weltanschauung  nothing  requiring  the  inter- 
vention of  the  Divinity ;  no  elememt  with  which  we 
are  not  famiUar  among  the  products  of  purely  human 
thought,  that  is  to  say,  in  rehgions  and  philosophies 
which  the  Church  of  Rome  does  not  recognize  as 
Divine  revelations,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot  be 
discarded  as  adulterated  imitations  of  what  the  Church 
offers  as  revelation,  since,  as  a  whole  or  as  parts,  they 
preceded  that  revelation  instead  of  following  it.  More- 
over, leaving  the  historical  question  aside,  there  is 
nothing  in  this  philosophical  half  of  the  rehgious 
"  Idea "  which  could  not  be  arrived  at  by  human 


III 


* 


.  { 


Father  Tyrrell  193 


thought  without  the  assistance  of  divine  revelation  ; 
indeed,  the  incoherences  like  the  notion  of  an  Infinite 
and  Eternal  Cause  thwarted  in  its  just  and  merciful 
designs  by  the  presence  of  Evil,  nay,  of  an  Infinite 
which  should  have  any  designs  or  quaUties  at  all — are 
themselves  just  the  incoherences  we  have  learned  to 
expect  from  the  workings  of  the  human  mind,  par- 
ticularly before  it  has  learned  to  separate  its  various 
standpoints ;  in  other  words,  great  as  is  the  share  of 
nonsense  which  Man  has  attributed  to  various  divini- 
ties, enough  nonsense  has  been  talked  by  Man  him- 
self for  us  to  attribute  the  whole  to  his  unaided  efforts. 
While,  on  the  other  hand,  important  as  may  be  the 
psychological  truths  and  moral  judgments  embodied 
in  this  divine  theory  of  man's  position  and  destiny, 
there  are  surely  enough  other  truths  undoubtedly 
arrived  at  by  man  alone  for  us  to  credit  him  with  these 
supposed  divine  ones  as  well.  Now,  if  we  strip  away 
these  parts,  fooUsh  and  sensible,  as  merely  the  human 
additions,  particularly  the  incoherences,  due  to  man's 
effort  to  compass  divine  meaning  with  a  human  in- 
strument, then  what  remains  of  the  diviniely  revealed 
meaning  ? 

But  besides  the  philosophical  half,  the  WeUanschau- 
ung,  of  that  germinal  nucleus  which  is  the  ''  Re- 
hgious Idea,"  there  is  the  other  and  more  important 
part,  namely,  the  element  of  sacramentaHsm  which 
informs  Christianity  and  especially  CathoUcism. 
In 


194 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  195 


IX 


Father  Tyrrell  is  anxiously  careful  to  separate  the 
sacramentalism  essential  to  Catholic  Christianity 
from  those  more  primseval  behefs  to  which  he  denies 
all  transcendental  value,  dismissing  them  as  utihtarian 
pseudo-science,  whose  traces  can  exist  only  in  the 
accretion,  in  the  magical  lore  which  has  enabled  the 
genuine  and  immortal  Keligious  "  Idea "  to  pene- 
trate, very  often  incognito,  into  imperfectly  spiritual 
times  and  classes. 

In  attempting  this  separation  Father  Tyrrell  is  not 
merely  turning  away  from  scientific  evidence  but, 
what  is  far  more  remarkable  in  so  candid  a  thinker, 
he  is  actually  flying  in  its  face,  since  if  there  is  any- 
thing common  to  those  earUer  cults  and  to  Chris- 
tianity, it  is  precisely  the  notions  concerning  man's 
mystical  relations  with  superhuman  creatures  which 
can  be  summarised  as  prayer,  possession,  revelation, 
and  the  sacraments  ;  and  it  is  just  these  notions,  with 
which  comparative  mythology  has  made  us  so  famihar 
under  the  heading  of  magic,  which  Father  Tyrrell 
accepts  as  one  half  of  the  eternal  germinal  nucleus  of 
the  Rehgious  "  Idea." 

Now  it  happens  that  this  mystical  and  sacramental 
element's  existence  in  pre-Christian,  nay,  primaeval 
behefs,  has  an  importance  beyond  its  suggestion  that 


s 


the  Rehgious  "  Idea  "  may  have  existed  independent 
of  revelation  and  previous  to  it.  For  if  the  mystical 
and  sacramental  element  is  to  be  found  in  primitive 
and  merely  pseydo-scientific  rehgions,  then  we  have 
a  right  to  regard  it  as  primitive  pseudo-scientific  when 
it  reappears  as  part  of  Father  TyrreU's  Rehgious 
"  Idea  "—and,  what  is  more,  to  apply  to  it  in  this 
privileged  return  upon  the  scene,  the  same  rational 
criticism  which  Father  TyrreU  himself  would  apply 
ruthlessly  to  its  first  manifestation  in  those  despised 
non-spiritual  cults  of  primitive  man. 

Such  criticism  of  Christian  mystical  and  sacramental 
habits  has  been  carried  out  pretty  thoroughly  by 
anthropologists  and  comparative  mythologists ;  it 
is  enough  to  mention  Professor  Frazer,  and  I  shall 
presently  examine,  as  one  of  my  types  of  latter-day 
Obscurantism,  the  apology  which  another  learned 
mythologist,  Mr  Ernest  Crawley,  extracts  for  AngUcan 
Christianity  out  of  an  assimilation  of  its  mysteries  to 
the  rehgious  notions  of  savage  races. 

But  even  admitting  that  further  scientific  inquiry 
should  prove  the  sacraments  of  the  church  to  be  no 
such  survival  of  primaeval  magic,  and  the  Christian 
(or  Mosaic)  revelation  to  be  no  equivalent  to  the 
revelations  which  other  rehgions  sought  in  oracles 
and  auspices  and  dreams ;  even  supposing  our  com- 
parative mythologists  to  prove  mistaken,  and  Father 
Tyrrell  to  be  justified  in  refusing  to  derive  his  Re- 


^--'=i^-i'^~- 


196 


Vital  Lies 


ligious  "  Idea  "  from  any  earlier  beliefs,  there  remains 
the  quite  separate  objection  that  if  we  can  explain 
SacramentaHsm  and  Mysticism  by  merely  human 
mental  operations  in  the  case  of  primitive  superstition, 
then  the  origin  of  similar  SacramentaHsm  and  Mysti- 
cism existing  in  Father  Tyrrell's  Kehgious  "  Idea  '* 
need  no  longer  be  referred  to  transcendental  explana- 
tion. If  psychology  (psychology  racial  as  well  as 
individual)  can  account  for  certain  "  transcendental " 
behefs  in  savages,  why  should  not  psychology  ac- 
count for  the  same  "  transcendental "  items  in  Father 
Tyrrell?  And  this  is  exactly  what  ethnological 
psychology,  that  is  to  say,  the  study  of  the  human 
mind  in  its  more  primitive  phases,  is  beginning  to  do. 

The  appUcation  of  psychological  analysis  to  the 
data  of  mythology  and  ethnology  is  beginning  to  shed 
light  upon  the  slow  development  of  what  seem  now- 
adays man's  inevitable  and  almost  innate  mental 
attitudes  and  processes.  One  of  the  most  difl&cult 
steps  in  this  human  evolution  has  been  the  gradual 
emergence  from  primaeval  confusion  of  [what  seems 
to  us]  the  simple  distinction  between  the  inner  and 
the  outer  world.  One  of  mankind's  labours  of  Her- 
cules has  been  the  endless  re-grouping  of  associated 
ideas  in  such  a  way  as  to  separate  the  constantly 
recurring  impressions  from  without  and  the  emotional 
and  practical  reactions  which  these  impressions  set 
up  within ;  in  other  words,  to  think  of  the  not-oneself 


III 


1^ 


i 


/ 


Father  Tyrrell  1 9  7 


as  connected  with  but  opposite  to  the  on^df.    Re- 
peated checking  of  man's  desires  and  actions  has 
graduaUy  set  free  and  clear  in  man's  consciousness 
our  now  familiar  conception,  the  thing,  the  object,  as 
distinguished  from  the  feelings  and  acts  which  that 
thmg's  quaHties  eUcit  in  man.    And  in  this  fashion 
there  has  graduaUy  emerged,  there  is  stiU  emerging, 
from  the  chaos  of  associations,  that  orderly  world  of 
thought  made  more  orderly,  as  Peircian  Pragmatism 
teaches,  by  our  past,  by  our  present,  and  our  foreseen, 
practice.     What  man  expects  has  become  more  and 
more  dependent  upon  experience,  and  less  and  less 
upon  desire.    Experience  itself  has  become  less  and 
less  of  the  single  case  connected  with  man's  own  action, 
and  more  and  more  of  repeated  cases  involving  differ- 
ent human  attitudes,  and  at  last  no  human  attitude 
at  aU  save  that  of  contemplative  thought :   the  cases 
thought  by  us  as  a  Law.    Thus  has  come  about  the 
separation  of  It  is  from  /  feel  and  do ;    the  gradual 
recognition  that  our  thoughts,  feehngs,  desires  can 
deal  with  things  only  in  so  much  as  things  exist  inde- 
pendently of  them.    Expectation-I  must  repeat  it, 
for  it  bears  upon  my  whole  subject-<jomes  to  be  less 
and  less  desire,  and  more  and  more  experience ;   and 
belief  becomes  logical  and  objective,  separating  itself 
more  and  more  from  the  self-centred  kinds  of  emotional 
thought  called  hope  and  fear. 
At  the  same  time  (the  time  extending  from  man's 


I  K 


198 


Vital  Lies 


h 


remotest  past  to  man's  yet  distant  future),  the 
imperative  of  reason  is  substituting  itself  for  the 
imperative  of  authority  :  belief  depends  more  and  more 
upon  the  fitting  in  of  facts  by  comparison,  analysis, 
and  causaUty,  rather  than  upon  reiterated  assertion 
of  statements  taken  in  the  lump  and  by  themselves. 
In  other  words,  the  more  belief— which,  is  active  and 
synthetic— develops,  the  more  also  does  faith  dwindle  ; 
faith  which  is  submission  of  one  man's  thought  to 
another's  ;  in  great  part  submission  of  the  thought  of 
the  hving  to  the  thought,  the  misinterpreted,  symboU- 
cally  explained,  thought  of  the  dead  ;  for  our  accept- 
ance of  a  fact  on  scientific  authority  is  not  an  act  of 
faith,  but  an  abutting  of  experience  and  argument. 
And  as,  in  this  manner,  behef  is  more  and  more  difPer- 
entiated  from  Hope  and  Fear,  a  further  change  takes 
place:  Faith  merges  more  and  more  into  the  con- 
fidence which  disarms  or  propitiates,  the  relation  of 
Will  and  Power  on  the  one  side,  and  of  Want  and 
Weakness  on  the  other. 

Now  with  this  evolution  of  man's  thinking  faculty, 
and  his  distinction  between  himself  and  not-himself, 
there  has  grown  up  a  distinction  between  natural 
and  supernatural. 

Natural  is  that  which  can  be  analysed,  foretold, 
thought ;  Supernatural  is  that  which  cannot.  And 
as  the  Natural  grows,  invades  and  appropriates  in  all 
directions,  the  Supernatural  shrinks  or  evaporates,  as 


Si 


ii 


h 


Father  Tyrrell  199 

we  see  it,  for  instance,  in  Spencer's  "  Unknowable." 
Primaeval  darkness  breaks  and  melts  away  from  the 
large  spaces  of  human  existence,  curdling  and  shrinking 
into  an  ever  smaller  corner  :  for  is  not  every  theology 
or  theosophy  such  a  segregation  of  primitive  thought 
still  saturated  with  personal  and  racial  emotion  ? 

Indeed,  I  can  conceive  that  the  day  may  come  when 
some  of  our  paradoxical  apologists  will  tell  us  that 
rehgions  have  been  indispensable  to  the  progress  of 
thought  by  gathering  into  an  ever-diminishing  and 
less  disturbing  heap  the  vestiges  of  the  great  primaeval 
confusion.  Did  not  Heaven  become  a  place  of  exile 
for  those  Gods  who,  for  so  many  aeons,  had  wasted 
poor  mankind's  strength  by  warring  across  his  path, 
hiding  in  every  object  which  he  grasped  or  saw, 
thwarting  his  attempts  at  every  turn,  large  or  small, 
of  his  miserable,  harassed  existence : 

"  0  genus  infdix  humanum,  talia  divis 
Cum  tribuit  facta  atque  iras  adiunxit  acerbas" 

For  of  that  primaeval  confusion  there  remained, 
there  still  remains,  and  will  long  remain,  an  insulated 
and  impregnable  corner  in  man's  own  soul :  the 
obscure  place  of  man's  dark  instinctive  hopes  and 
fears,  of  his  unsatisfied  longings  and  incurable  griefs. 
There,  as  in  the  mind  of  our  earliest  ancestors,  the 
Self  and  Not-Self  are  stiU  merged ;  expectation  is  not 
experience  but  wish ;  and  belief  is  what  is  given  the 
name  of  Faith. 


I  ! 


200 


Vital  Lies 


"  Lea  tendances  iniellectuelles,  aujourcPhui  inniea,  que  la  vie  a  dH 
crier  au  cours  de  son  Evolution,  sont  faiies  pour  tout  autre  chose  que 
pour  nous  fournir  une  explication  de  la  vie." 

Bergson,  "  Evolution  Cr6atrice,"  p.  22. 

"Son  objet  {de  la  science  positive)  n'est  pas,  en  effet,  de  nov^ 
rivder  le  fond  des  choses,  mais  de  nous  fournir  le  meilleur  moyen 
d'agir  sur  dies .  .  .  Tout  autre,  a  notre  avis,  est  cdui  de  la 
phUosophie"  Ibid.,  p.  101. 

And  here  I  would  open  a  parenthesis  to  point  out 
that  the  obscurantism  of  our  day  frequently  tries  to 
identify  this  residual,  and  so  far  irreclaimable,  mass  of 
mystic  thought  with  the  subconscious  or  automatic 
activities  constituting  life's  very  core ;  while  our 
impatient,  indiscriminating  disdain  for  the  insufficiency 
of  former  rationahstic  explanation  of  the  world  delivers 
us  into  the  hands  of  these  apologists  for  dying  creeds. 
Moreover,  the  vitahstic  conceptions  of  much  recent 
biology  lend  themselves,  occasionally  perhaps  even 
in  the  minds  of  their  authors,  to  a  vague  animism. 
On  the  other  hand,  our  gradual  recognition  of  the 
part  played  in  history  by  myths  and  misappre- 
hensions, our  recognition  also  how  Uttle  has  been 
achieved  by  lucid  programme  and  how  much  by  mere 
blind  struggle  of  passions  and  habits,  has  further 
contributed,  in  a  negative  sense  at  least,  to  an  attempted 
restoration  of  the  old  principles  of  faith  and  mystery ; 
while  the  increasing  importance  given  by  mental  science 


Father  Tyrrell  201 


to  the  notion  of  unconscious  reflexes  and  of  psychic 
processes  outside  of  the  focus  of  attention,  has  also 
been  caUed  upon  for  the  hmniUation  of  the  former 
despot  Reason  and  the  reinstatement  of  whatever 
mental  Chaos  preceded  it.    The  imperfect  disciphne 
of  many  minds  brought  unprepared  in  contact  with 
philosophic  thought  has  resulted  in  an  intellectual 
tendency   paiaUel   to   the   neo-monarchic   and   neo- 
aristocratic  arraignments  of  the  shams  and  drawbacks 
of  democracy.    We  may  thus  daily  witness  an  at- 
tempted identification  of  the  residual  mysteries  left 
by  scientific  thought  with  the  mysteries  enshrmed  by 
various  reUgions.    Thus  :   If  the  theological  explana- 
tion of  Evil  is  full  of  contradiction,  is  the  philosophical 
crux  of  otyjective  and  subjective  not  equaUy  bewUdermg  ? 
If  the  sacraments  are  unfathomable  by  human  reason, 
is  memory,  is   heredity,  is   Ufe   itself  any  easier  to 
understand  ?    Such  are  the  criticisms  we  hear  on  aU 
sides     In  short,  there  is  at  present  a  tendency,  not 
merely  to  identify  (Uke  Spencer)  the  Unkrwwn  with 
the  VnhmmabU,  and  the  Unktmoabk  with  wfud  w 
knoum  as  God,  but  also  to  treat  lucid  consciousness  as 
a  delusion  separated  from  aU  Ufe  and  hopelessly  unable 
to  tackle  life's  problems.    The  only  true  Knowledge, 
so  we  are  constantly  having  it  hinted  (for  hinting  goes 
V  better  with  such  views  than  plain  statement)  is  the 
obscure  knowledge  called  Instirwt  or  IrUuUim,  the 
"integral"  mass  of  consciousness;    the  knowledge 


f 


202 


Vital  Lies 


which,  so  to  say,  knows  what  we  want  to  do  and  does 
not  trouble  itself  with  what  the  not-ourself  may  happen 
to  he. 

Now  there  is  indeed  a  sense  in  which  this  latter-day 
adumbration   (for  obscurantism  prefers  showing  the 
shadow  rather  than  the  substance)  may  be  considered 
correct ;  but  it  is  not  the  sense  in  which  it  is  intended  : 
Life,  individual  and  racial,  is  certainly  based  in  dark- 
ness, and  the  most  constant  and  indispensable  of  hfe's 
processes,  those  shared  not  only  with  animals  but  with 
plants,  indeed  those  which  we  share  in  as  much  as 
mechanical  aggregates  and  chemical  compounds  with 
what  we  caU  inanimate  nature,  are  unaccompanied,  not 
only  by  lucid  thought,  but  often  by  consciousness  of 
any  kind.     Now  that  lucidity  should  not  accompany 
the   wriggUngs   of   protozoa,   or   the   chumings   and 
cookings  of  man's  viscera,  nor  even  the  strainings 
and  shrinkings  of  man's  sense-organs ;    that  lucidity 
should  be  imperfect  in  the  thought  of  infants  and 
savages,  all  this  does  not  prove  that  lucidity  is  opposed 
to  the  true  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  the  Universe. 
For  httle  as  we  raw  philosophers  may  know  of  either* 
we  yet  know  more  than  plants  and  microbes,  mor^ 
than  our  viscera  and  Hmbs,  more  than  our  new-bom 
children  and  our  own  earhest  forefathers.    And  incom- 
mensurable with  reahty  as  doubtless  are  our  thoughts, 
they  do  know  more  of  it  than  instincts  and  reflexes ;' 
know,  at  least,  that  there  is  something  to  know  about.' 


Father  Tyrrell  203 


H 


I 


Indeed  it  is  only  since  emerging  so  far  from  this  "  direct 
knowledge  "  possessed  by  reflexes  and  instincts,  that 
we  know,  for  one  thing,  that  reflexes  and  instincts,  the 
great  Sub-Conscious  itself,  exist  at  all :  for  what  are  all 
these  things  save  inferences,  they  and  their  superior 
powers,  made  by  that  lucid  thought  which  we  are  told 
to  despise.    And  if  knowledge  is  to  be  measured  by  its 
knowing  (if  I  may  use  such  a  paradox)  that  there  are 
objects  of  knowledge  besides  our  own  cravings  and 
movements,  then,  little  of  it  as  there  yet  may  be,  there 
was  remarkably  less  in  the  beginning.    For  in  the 
Beginning  was,  not  the  Word  or  the  Thought,  but  the 
Want  and  the  Act ;  and  all  around  lay  the  unexplored 
chaos  where  everj^hing  could  be  something  else,  where 
space  could  be  simultaneously  occupied  by  different 
bodies  and  time  inverted,  where  difference  could  be 
the  same  as  identity,  where  contradictions  did  not 
exclude  each  other ;  and  the  only  certainty  was  what 
man  hoped  and  feared,  suffered  and  did,  particularly 
what  a  great  many  people  said  and  did  and  hoped  and 
feared  together. 

It  is  this  primaeval  chaos,  with  its  fitful  gleams 
of  idea  and  its  ceaseless  heaving  of  hopes  and 
fears,  which  still  Hves  on  in  the  hidden  corners  of 
Modernism. 


204 


Vital  Lies 


XI 

Religious    habits    have    so    accustomed    even    un- 
believers to  such  survivals  of  primaeval  mental  chaos, 
that  it  takes  a  kind  of  isolating  diagram  to  make  us 
aware  of  their  existence.     Such  an  example  is  un- 
intentionally   offered    by    Father    Tyrrell's    theories. 
Here  is  a  historian,   who  is  also   a  metaphysician, 
giving  to  the  unknowable,  i.e.  the  region  where  our 
intellectual  categories  fail  us,  a  historical  happening 
in  the  person  of  Jesus,  since  the  Ufe  of  Jesus  marks 
the  point  of  intersection  where  the  "  transcendental " 
cuts  into,  grafts  itseK  upon,  the  rationally  conceivable. 
This  is  far  grosser  than  the  notion  of  the  Transcen- 
dental Unknowable  incarnating  in  an  individual  man. 
For  we  can  make  something  of  such  an  incarnation 
by    regarding    the    Transcendental    Unknowable    as 
thougJU  by  that  incarnating  man,  by  turning  the  Tran- 
scendent into  an  accusative  of   the  verb  to  think — 
of  which   that  incarnating  man  is  the  nominative. 
But  a  historical  revelation  has  to  be  the  accusative  of 
a  verb  to  reveal,  whose  nominative  is  the  Transcendent 
Unknowable.      Now     the     Unknowable,  the     Tran- 
scendent, being  only  a  residual  and  empty  category, 
we  get  the  following  logical  pattern  :   a  residual  nega- 
tive concept  which  is  the  nominative  of  a  transitive 
verb  necessarily  limited  to  a  historical  point,  namely, 


) 


Father  Tyrrell  205 

the  historical  moment  when  the  Unknowable  made 
the  revelation.  In  other  words  the  Unknowable, 
which  has  hitherto  governed  the  verb  to  be  (since  all 
they  can  be  postulated  of  an  Unknowable  is  Umited 
to  its  bare  being)  suddenly  leaps  out  and  becomes  the 
nominative  of  the  verb  to  reveal ;  and  what  is  worse, 
of  the  verb  to  reveal  in  its  past,  its  historical,  tense. 
This  is  how  the  case  shapes  itself  if  thought  out  in 
logical,  nay,  in  merely  grammatical  terms.  But 
Father  Tyrrell  thinks  these  things  in  a  rapid  alter- 
nation, a  shimmer,  of  objective  and  subjective  :  his- 
toric revelation,  voices,  spoken  words,  Christ's  birth, 
teaching,  and  death ;  turn  about  with  permanent 
possibihties  of  feeling,  Christ's,  Tyrrell's  own,  other 
men's,  an  abstract  category.  And,  further  to  confuse 
us,  he  thinks  of  the  Whole  in  metaphysical  terms,  and 
then  feels  the  Whole  as  part  of  his  own  feelings.  And 
the  welter  of  these  contradictory  elements  is  what  he 
means  by  the  ReUgious  "  Idea." 


XII 


"  Charged  with  untold  and  untdlable  Wisdom." 

We  learn  from  Father  Tyrrell,  what  is  indeed 
imphcit  in  all  religious  writers,  that  the  "  Rehgious 
Idea,"  as  he  calls  it,  consists  very  largely  in  an  impulse 
towards  union  with  a  Whole  whereof  man  is  and  knows 


ace 


ama 


WS 


2o6 


Vital  Lies 


V 


but  a  tiny  part.  Now  there  are  two  possible  manners 
of  realizing,  or  partially  realizing,  this  which,  for  mere 
lack  of  proper  vocabulary,  I  must  designate  as  the 
program  impUed  in  that  Rehgious  "  Idea."  There 
is  a  manner  of  realizing  a  whole  by  reahzing  the 
co-ordination  of  many  into  one :  a  deed  of  analysis 
followed  by  one  of  sjmthesis,  or  perhaps  properly 
speaking  an  interplay  of  analysis  and  synthesis,  Uke 
that  of  the  musician  in  "  hearing  out "  the  notes  of 
chords  and  the  parts  of  a  counterpoint,  taking  stock 
of  their  separate  nature,  of  their  mutual  relations, 
and  uniting  them  in  the  unity  of  a  musical  idea — 
(not  at  all  an  "idea"  in  Father  Tyrrell's  sense!). 
The  musician  in  question  is  in  this  fashion  united, 
or  rather  imites  himself,  with  the  whole  which  is  the 
composer's  intention.  Similar  to  this  is  that  whole 
of  the  Universe  to  which  the  human  mind  would 
be  united,  were  any  human  mind  capable  of  knowing 
analytically  and  grasping  synthetically  all  the  relations 
of  which  that  whole  universe  would  consist. 

This  manner  of  union  with  a  whole  is,  as  you  see, 
dependent  upon  a  separating,  a  holding  asunder  and 
co-ordinating  of  parts.  This  tmy  of  being  united  with 
a  whole  is,  it  is  well  to  notice,  unfrequent  in  primaeval 
man,  because  the  stress  of  practical  life,  the  adapta- 
tion to  immediate  wants  and  dangers  do  not  allow 
such  contemplative  synthetic  analysis,  such  building 
up  of  a  whole  from  which,^like  the  musically  developed 


i 


Father  Tyrrell  207 

hstener  to  a  symphony,  man  holds  himself  distinct : 
for  union,  in  this  sense  of  union  with  a  whole,  impUes 
previous  separateness.  Primitive  man,  and  every 
individual  of  us  in  so  far  as  he  resembles  Primitive 
man  (during  infancy,  for  instance),  has  not  leisure  or 
strength  for  such  contemplative  construction :  in 
him  associations  are  still  largely  individual ;  in  his 
mind,  experience  is  not  a  contemplative  continuity, 
but  so  many  bundles,  often  individual  (or  appljdng 
to  his  tribe  or  country)  of  items  grouped  casually 
under  the  hegemony  of  his  own  feeUng  and  action. 

We  have  dealt  so  far  with  the  Whole  which  is  the 
result  of  analysis  and  synthesis ;  the  whole  which 
impUes  co-ordination  ;  the  whole  which  we  know,  and 
know  to  be  the  particular  whole  which  it  is.  The  other 
Whole,  or  rather  the  set  of  phenomena  to  which  that 
name  is  given,  is  of  different  and  even  opposite  nature  ; 
and  the  way  in  which  man  can  be  said  to  unite  with  it 
is  different  and  opposite  also.  This  second  Whole  is 
a  whole  not  because  we  co-ordinate  its  parts,  but 
because  we  do  not  perceive  or  conceive  them.  It  is, 
so  to  speak,  homogeneous  chaos,  differentiated  only 
from  ourself,  but  undifferentiated  in  itself.  This 
kind  of  "  Whole "  is  due  to  the  abohtion  or  the 
not  yet  existence  of  quahties  and  relations ;  it  is 
the  whole  whereof  we  know  only  that  it  is  there  and 
that  we  know  nothing  of  it.  It  is  the  not-ourself 
as  yet  unexplored  and  unmeasured  by  the  ourself. 


m 


I 


I  >f 


il 


i 


t  ) 


208 


Vital  Lies 


It  is  the  whole,  not  as  it  is  apprehended  by  the  musi- 
cian who  hears  a  symphony,  but  as  it  is  feU  by  the 
unmusical  hearer  to  whom  that  symphony  is  a  mere 
sea  of  sounds  of  which  he  can  tell  us  nothing  save  how 
he  felt  in  the  midst  of  it.    And  this  is  the  whole  of  which 
we  are  told  the  revelations  of  mystics.    I  have  re- 
ferred to  the  unmusical  hearer  of  the  symphony  (the 
one  for  whom  the  symphony  as  symphony  has  no 
existence)  being  able  to  tell  us  nothing  except  what 
he  felt.    Knowledge,  not  of  what  made  him  feel,  but 
of  how  he  felt,  is  the  characteristic  of  this  other  kind  of 
union  with  the  whole  :   what  dominates  in  it,  even  as 
appetite   and   action   predominate   in    the    primitive 
man's  experience,  in  the  infant's  and  probably  the 
animal's,   are  the  man's  emotional  and  motor  con- 
ditions.    Above  all,  he  knows  them ;    and  if  they  are 
satisfactory,  he,  hke  the  lover  in  Whitman's  "  Terrible 
Doubt  of  Appearances,"  feels  satisfied  about  the  rest. 
For  we  must  remember  that  where  emotion  is  strong 
and  of  a  piece,  it  leaves  no  room  for  anything  else ; 
no   questions   remain   unsolved,   no   conflicts  remain 
unsettled,    simply    because    questions    and    conflicts 
have  vanished ;    and  when  the  lover,  or  the  mystic, 
or  the  man  immersed  in  mere  aesthetic  deUght,  re- 
members that  there  ever  have  been  such  questions 
and  conflicts,  these  become,  compared  with  the  over- 
whelming   satisfactory     emotion,     mere    unreahties, 
phantoms  without  the  power  of  troubling. 


Father  Tyrrell  209 


Thus  has  the  mystic  come  in  contact  with  the  wh)le, 
the  whole  in  the  sense  of  what  alone  is  dominating  his 
spirit,  of  what  is  known  to  be  different  from  himself 
but  not  differentiated  in  itself,  even  as  the  unmusical 
man  is  immersed  in  the  chaotic  sea  of  sound.  And 
if  his  attendant  emotion  has  been  satisfactory,  this 
condition  of  knowing  nothing  is  afterwards  described 
as  comprising  the  satisfying  knowledge  of  everything, 
and  this  emotional  reahzation  of  homogeneous  chaos, 
is  described  as  mystic  union  with  the  whole. 

That  this  realization— if  we  may  call  it  so— of  an 
I  emotionally  irradiated  mental  void  should  be  satis- 
factory is  due  not  only  to  the  specific  satisfactoriness 
of  unification  of  consciousness,  but,  what  is  more 
important,  to  the  fact  that  unsatisfactoriness  would 
mean  dismissal :  for,  except  in  mental  disease,  a  pain- 
ful unity  of  consciousness  will  produce  attempts  at 
riddance,  at  discrimination,  and  the  contemplated 
chaotic  whole  will  be  broken  up  into  fragments  of 
coherent  thought  or  coherent  action.  Be  the  ex- 
planation as  it  may,  there  exist  such  emptyings  out 
of  the  consciouness  for  the  benefit  of  one  absorbing, 
satisfying  emotion  which,  dismissing  all  questions, 
seems  thereby  to  answer  them  : 


(( 


Of  the  terrible  doubt  of  appearances, 
Of   the   uncertainty  thai,  after  all,  we   rmy  he   de- 
luded .  .  . 


2IO 


Vital  Lies 


To  me  these  and  the  like  of  these  are  curiously  answered 

by  my  lovers,  my  dear  friends, 
When  he  whm  I  love  travels  with  me  or  sits  a  long 

while  holding  me  by  the  hand, 
When  the  subtle  air,  the  impalpable,  the  sense  that  words 

and  reason  hold  not. 
Surround  us  and  pervade  us. 
Then  I  am  charged  with  untold  and  untellMe  wisdom, 

I  am  silent ;  I  require  nothing  further ; 
I  cannot  answer  the  question  of  appearances  or  that  of 

identity  beyond  the  grave  ; 
Bui  I  walk  or  sit  indifferent,  I  am  satisfied, 
He  ahold  of  my  hand  has  completely  satisfied  me.'' 


Like  Whitman's  Lover,  the  Mystic  feels  himself 
"  charged  with  untold  and  mitellable  wisdom."  Of 
that  whole  with  which  he  feels  himself  united  he 
knows  only  that  it  is  satisfying.  He  is  per- 
vaded by  the  impalpable,  the  sense  that  words 
and  reason  hold  not;  and,  hke  Whitman's  lover, 
the  Lover  of  God  is  freed  from  "  the  terrible  doubt 
of  appearances."  ^ 

1  Cf.  W.  James's  "  Varieties  of  Religious  BeUef,"  and  my  criticism 
on  hia  account  of  mystic  Truth,  p.  112  et  seq.,  of  this  book. 


Father  Tyrrell  2 1 1 


XIII 


"  The  Terrible  Doubt  of  Appearances.^' 

Equally  exphcable  by  the  primitive  confusion 
between  Man's  thought  and  Man's  emotions  is  the 
attitude  of  ReHgion  towards  two  other  of  its  "  Mys- 
teries "  :   Death  and  Suffering. 

In  the  Ught  of  biological  knowledge,  Death  is  one 
of  the  most  orderly  of  all  phenomena,  indeed,  irre- 
placeable in  the  mechanism  of  the  higher  kinds  of 
life.  For  Death  is  co-related  to  assimilation  and  ex- 
cretion, to  reproduction,  multipHcation,  competition ; 
in  fact,  to  all  bodily  and  social  existence ;  a  detail 
so  indispensable  as  to  warrant  Weissmann's  sugges- 
tion that  the  supreme  adaptation  which  raised  certain 
organisms  above  others  and  secured  to  their  species 
not  survival  merely  but  development,  was,  so  to 
speak,  the  happy  accident,  or  the  happier  invention, 
of  death. 

This  is  how  death  must  appear  to  the  modern  in- 
tellect ;  how,  indeed,  it  would  have  presented  itself 
to  earher  philosophic  thought,  but  for  the  traditional 
tyranny  of  notions  arisen  from  man's  emotional  wants. 
For  to  all  our  habits  and  instincts,  our  love  of  others 
and  of  ourselves,  to  the  dominant  mass  of  our  feelings, 
death  is  a  wrench,  a  tearing  up,  a  monstrous  violation. 
This  thing  of  constant  experience  (and  logical  in- 


212 


Vital  Lies 


evitableness)  is  felt  to  be  unnatural.  And  becoming 
unnatural,  it  becomes  mysterious,  and  thence  in- 
credible. Fear  and  horror  end  in  disbelief ;  and 
clinging  to  his  own  life  and  the  life  of  his  dear  ones, 
Man  substitutes  for  death  some  sort  of  immortahty  : 

"  Behold  I  show  you  a  mystery.  .  .  .  When  this 
corruptible  shall  have  put  on  incorrwption,  and  this 
mortal  shall  have  put  on  immortality,  then  shall  he 
brought  to  pass  that  is  u)ritten.  Death  is  swallowed 
up  in  victory.  0  Death,  where  is  thy  sting?  0 
grave,  where  is  thy  victory  ?  " 

But  to  the  unemotional  part  of  man,  to  his  ex- 
perience and  reason,  it  is  the  absence  of  death  which 
would  have  a  sting,  that  is  to  say,  would  be  difficult, 
impossible  to  face. 

As  it  is  with  Death,  so  it  is  with  Suffering  and  Sin. 
These  are  facts  of  experience  which,  logically  con- 
sidered, have  nothing  strange  about  them ;  indeed, 
the  strange  thing  would  be  if  they  had  not  existed. 
Suffering  and  Sin  (which  is  the  social  expression  for 
what  produces  or  is  supposed  to  produce  suffering) 
are,  rationally  considered,  the  result  of  individual 
and  collective  sensitiveness,  sensitiveness  necessarily 
always  (logically  again)  in  advance  of  the  adaptation 
which  it  strives  to  compass.  While,  as  regards  the 
presence  of  Evil  in  the  universe,  that  problem,  as  we 
shall  see  in  dealing  with  the  Manichsean  crux  of  all 
rehgion,  would  not  exist  save  for  man's  projection  of 


t] 


Father  Tyrrell  213 

his  own  preferences  beyond  the  Hmits  of  his  own 
nature,  and  his  gratuitous  identification  of  the  Uni- 
verse's ways  with  his  own :    there  is  every  reason, 
and  the  whole  of  experience,  to  tell  us  that  the  telluric 
processes  of  a  particular  portion  of  land  and  sea  can- 
not be  subservient  to  the  safety  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Messina,  although  the  safety  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Messina  is  so  barbarously  jeopardized  by  these  pre- 
existing processes.    So  the  question  of  Evil  appears 
to    mere   reason.     But    emotionally    considered,    the 
presence  of  Evil  in  the  Universe,  as  exemplified  by 
just  such  an  earthquake  (and  also,  I  may  add,  by  the 
sufferings  of  a  vivisected  dog !)  is  a  flagrant  violation 
of  man's  instincts,  instincts  which  reason  shows  us 
to  be  inevitable  and  indispensable  to  man.     Suffering 
exists  only  for  sentient,  evil  only  for  sentient  and 
thinking  beings  ;  but  for  such  beings  they  become  the 
most  important  of  all  facts.    Hence  man  is  puzzled 
by  the  existence  of  them :    he  cannot  realize  that 
what  hurts  him  is  not  intended  to  hurt  him,  still  less 
that  there  need  be  no  intention  in  the  matter.    To 
his  emotion  suffering  means  injustice ;    and  therefore 
he  carves  out  of  the  unknown  Beyond,  out  of  that 
great  continent  of  the   Unthought  lying  beyond  his 
exploration    (as   Dante    carved   out   of   the   earth's 
bowels  and  the  star's  radiance),  a  place  or  time  where 
evil  is  punished  and  suffering  compensated,  a  world, 
transcendental  indeed,  but  not   recognized   as   con- 


214 


Vital  Lies 


substantiate  with  his  own  mind  and  feehng,  where 
death  will  not  be,  nor  (as  Jesus  and  other  theologians 
logically  added)  marrying  and  being  given  in  marriage 
either. 

These  are  simple  enough  phenomena  easily  expUcable 
(if  only  all  other  problems  were  as  simple  !)  by  what 
we  know,  scientifically  and  also  by  everyday  observa- 
tion, of  the  mentahty  of  man.  But  these  cravings 
and  puzzles,  these  contradictions  and  contradictory 
solutions,  this  substitution  of  the  "  I  want " — for  the 
**  It  is  " — are  still  given  us  by  men  hke  Father  Tyrrell 
as  mysteries,  transcendental,  divine,  and  whose  ex- 
planation is  so  impossible  to  compass  that  we  must 
accept  it  and  them  as  altogether  superior  to  reason, 
and  approachable  only  by  faith. 


XIV 

Religion,  Father  Tyrrell  and  all  other  rehgiouB 
apologists  tell  us,  not  only  satisfies  our  craving  for 
Union  with  the  Whole,  but  gives  us  the  certainty  that 
this  Whole  is,  in  some  way  transcending  our  under- 
standing, good,  indeed,  aU-good  and  the  Ocean,  as  it 
were,  from  which  all  human  goodness  proceeds  and  to 
which,  in  the  form  of  reUgious  obedience,  it  returns ; 
moreover  that,  in  some  transcendental  way,  suffering 
and  sin  will  be  neutrahzed  or  compensated ;  above  aU, 


i 


^ 


I 

r] 

« 


I 


Father  Tyrrell  215 


that  there  is,  for  the  individual  soul,  a  transcendental 

but  Uteral  and  objective  life  beyond  this  mortal  one. 

"  Death,"  as  St  Paul  wrote,  "  is  swallowed  up  in 

victory." 

Now  let  us  ask  ourselves  whether  these  beliefs  are 
such  that  they  must  be  accepted  as  transcendental 
truths  divinely  revealed;  or  whether  they  are  the 
notions  which  could  and  must  have  arisen  in  the 
unaided  human  mind ;  notions  moreover  which,  Hke 
that  of  the  Mystic  Union  with  the  Whole,  the  human 
mind  is  sooner  or  later  bound  to  explain  by  what  it 
knows  of  its  own  constitution,  and  to  discard  as  some 
of  its  own  inevitable,  but  also  inevitably  rehnquished, 
misapprehensions. 

I  have  akeady  referred  to  what  recent  study  of 
primitive  psychology  is  able  to  tell  us  about  one  of 
the  main  distinctions  between  the  mentahty  of  primi- 
tive peoples  and  our  own :  namely,  the  comparative 
absence  in  the  thought  of  savages  not  only  of  abstraction 
and  general  ideas,  but,  what  is  more  distinctive  and  im- 
portant, of  that  principle  of  contradiction  which  poUces 
our  thought  and  reduces  it  to  law-abiding  order.^ 

1  L6vy-Bruhl,  "  Les  Fonctions  Mentales  dans  les  Soci6t^  In- 
f^rieures  "  (1910),  p.  77.—"  En  d'autres  iermea,  pour  cette  mentaiiU, 
Vopposition  entre  Vun  et  le  plusieurs,  le  mime  et  Vautre  etc.,  n'impoae 
pas  la  nicessiU  d'affirmer  Vun  des  termes  si  Von  nie  Vautre,  ou 
riciproquement."  M.  L^vy-Bruhl's  most  interesting  book  is  full  of 
such  instances  of  "  pre-logical "  thought,  coinciding  curiously  with 
the  indifference  to  temporal  and  spatial  possibilities  shown  in  the 
drawings  of  children.     Cf.  Levinstein's  "  Kinderzeichnungen." 


2l6 


Vital  Lies 


Now,  while  the  secular  thought  of  the  race  has 
become  more  and  more  subject  to  experience  and  hence 
more  capable  of  logical  operations,  so  that  the  tradi- 
tions of  primaeval  confusion  have  been  more  and  more 
replaced  by  a  heritage  (transmitted  in  language  and 
the  scarcely  noticed  education  of  the  earUest  years  of 
infancy)  of  experiential  axioms  and  logical  operations, 
— while  such  has  been  the  case  in  secular  life,  the 
rehgious  hfe  of  mankind  has  become  more  and  more  a 
segregated  survival,  secured  by  the  primitive  methods 
of  memorial  repetition  and  ritual  association,  of  habits 
of    thought    such    as    psychological    ethnography    is 
studying   under   the   rubric   of   "  pre-logical."    Most 
characteristic  of    religious   belief,  wherever  it  lingers 
(and  however  much  disguised  as  "  philosophy "),  is 
that  lack,  so  characteristic  in  primitive  man,  of  the 
principle  of  contradiction. 

In  all  rehgious  thought,  as  in  the  matter  of  "  Union 
with  the  Whole,"  what  dominates  is  the  sense  of 
emotional  conditions— need,  want,  striving,— which  do 
reaUy  exist  alternately  in  the  individual  consciousness, 
and  whose  successive  assertions  are  grouped  together 
regardless  of  their  incompatible  (because  successive) 
nature,  and  more  regardless  still  of  their  conflict  with 
everything  else.  Thus  all  Christian  philosophical 
thought  is  crevassed  through  and  through  by  certain 
antinomies :  the  postulate  of  Omnipotent  Infinity  on  the 
one  side,  that  of  Absolute  Goodness  on  the  other ;  or,  in 


Father  Tyrrell  217 


other  words,  the  rational  conception  of  a  causal  whole 
with  the  emotional  demand  for  S5nmpathy  and  righteous- 
ness. This  contradiction  has  led,  in  the  Christian 
"  Idea  "  as  expounded  by  Father  Tyrrell,  to  a  practical 
-^  dualism  (once  boldly  declared  by  the  Manichaean  sects) 

of  a  Good  God  and  a  Wicked  Devil,  among  whose  con- 
flicts and  occasional  truces  mankind  develops  its  tragic 
destiny ;  and  when  it  has  become  philosophically 
untenable  in  its  rehgious  definiteness  Professor  WilHam 
James  has  crumbled  it  into  less  obvious  fragments  and 
sprinkled  it  about  in  his  plurahstic  system.  That  the 
Whole  should  be  all  good,  yet  contain  (or  will)  evil ; 
that  God  should  be  omnipotent  yet  tolerate  a  principle 
of  evil  and  leave  man  free  to  sin  and  to  follow  its 
interference,  is  a  grouping  of  ideas  which  can  be  ac- 
cepted as  "  transcendentally  "  true  only  because  logical 
thought  has  not  analysed  it  and  separated  what  it 
contains  of  observation  and  reason  from  the  admix- 
ture of  man's  desires  or  strivings  ;  because,  moreover, 
rehgious  habits  have  accustomed  us  to  accept  by  *'  acts 
of  faith  "  and  transmit  by  verbal  memory  and  ritual 
symbol,  contradictions  which,  had  they  occurred  in  ob- 
jective experience,  would  have  long  since  been  solved 
by  the  analysis  of  their  components  and  arrang- 
ing them  under  separate  points  of  view.  For  all 
contradiction  disappears  once  we  recognize  that 
morahty,  goodness,  truth,  mercy,  are  quaUties  evolved 
in  Man  because  necessary  to  Man's  social  existence, 


■"^rr-mm^KiKm 


fefeijfflgg 


Vital  Lies 


218 

but  having    no   meaning  where  no  human  relations 
exist,  while  they  are  absolutely  out-of -plane  with  such 
conceptions  as  the  Infinite,  the  Eternal,  the  Absolute, 
the  Cause,  the  Whole,  call  it  Nature  or  Divinity.    The 
frightful  antinomy  vanishes  in  the  clear  recognition 
that  human  needs  have  their  abutment  not  in  what 
the  Universe  is,   but  in  what  mankind  contrives  to  do 
or  make  of  himself  and  its  small  scrap  of  that  universe. 
But  religious  habit  leaves   the   contradiction   in  its 
crudest  form,  the  astounding  symbol  of  a  Divinity 
thwarted  by  a  Demon  of  his  own  creating,  rebelled 
against  by  his  other  creature  Man,  and  having  lost 
patience  (as  Father  Tyrrell  tells  us)  at  the  excesses  of 
the  principle  of  evil,   "making  man's  necessity  into 
God's  opportunity''  and  letting  himself  be  partially 
placated  by  the  monstrous  sacrifice  of  a  portion  of 
himself    in    expiation    of    man's    disobedience.     This 
inconsistency  reUgion  keeps  and  enshrines  in  every 
metaphor,  in  every  verbaUsm  susceptible  of  rousing 
human  emotion;    and,  having  silenced  the  sense  of 
logical  contradiction  in  the  overpowering  union  or 
harmony  of  feehng,  religion  insists  that  there  is  no 
contradiction  ;   till  the  beUever,  again  hke  Whitman's 
lover,  forgets  the  terrible  doubt  of  appearances^  and 
"whether  there  is  or  is  not  identity  beyond    the 
grave." 


y 


Father  Tyrrell  219 


XV 

Together  with  a  "  conceptual "  side  which  I  have 
tried  to  analyse  in  certain  of  its  philosophical  items, 
such  as  "  union  with  the  whole  "  and  the  problem  of 
Suffering  and  Death,  there  is  in  the  "  Rehgious  Idea  " 
what  Father  Tprell  calls  a  mystical,  and  I  should 
venture  to  call,  a  sacramental  side.  Let  us  attempt, 
from  however  far  off,  to  get  a  glimpse  of  it. 

"  The  Sorcerers  of  Loango  allow  the  public,  for  a 
trifling  consideration,  to  put  additional  articles  of  its 
oum  into  tJwir  authorized  collection  of  magical  para- 
phernalia, and  leave  them  in  contact  for  weeks  and  even 
months." 

This  passage  in  M.  Levy-Bruhl's  remarkable  volume 
on  the  "  Mental  Functions  of  Primitive  Mankind  "  re- 
minded me  that  I  had  myself  once  witnessed  a  method 
of  increasing  the  already  existing  stock  of  wonder- 
working valuables  by  no  means  unlike  that  of  these 
Loango  wizards.  It  was  in  the  crypt  of  the  former 
abbey  of  Jouarre,  near  the  Marne.  You  tied  a  tape 
tight  round  the  arm  of  a  certain  miraculous  statue 
and  took  it  away  with  you  when  it  was  judged  to  have 
absorbed  a  sufficient  amount  of  thaumaturgic  power 
by  this  contact.  From  such  dehberately  obtained 
(I  scarcely  know  whether  to  call  them)  fetishes  or 
reUcs,  my  mind  passed  analogically  to  the  fact  of 


: 


220 


Vital  Lies 


having  once  been  asked  to  bring  back  from  Rome  an 
ivy-leaf  off  the  grave  of  Keats.    What  was  the  differ- 
ence between  this  leaf  and  all  similar  mementoes- 
locks  of  hair,  autographs  and  so  forth — on  the  one 
hand,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  both  the  tapes  I  had 
seen  round  that  miraculous  image  at  Jouarre  and  those 
small  portables  which,  as  M.  Levy-Bruhl  tells  us,  the 
Loango  sorcerers  turn  an  honest  penny  by  placing  in 
contact  with  their  own  authenticated  magic  posses- 
sions ?     The  difference   between   the  two  cases   will 
perhaps  make  us  understand  some  of  the  peculiarities 
of  the  mj^tical-sacramental  frame  of  mind.     Take  the 
ivy  leaf  off  Keats's  grave.     My  friend  in  receiving  and 
I  in  picking  it,  undoubtedly  have  a  httle  emotion,  in 
which  the  thought  of  Keats  is  more  vivid  than  when 
we  merely  mention  his  name,  and  even  perhaps  when 
we  read  his  poems  or  his  Hf e.    Indeed,  it  is  for  the  sake 
of  this  emotion,  this  acutely  felt  presence  of  what  we 
call  ''  Keats,"  that  the  leaf  is  picked  and  preserved. 
But  we  are  thoroughly  aware  that  the  leaf  as  such  has 
,  nothing  to  do  either  with  Keats's  genius  or  with  Keats's 
sad  history,  even  should  it  be  materially  sprung  from 
Keats's  mortal  remains.    We  know  that  our  emotion 
arises  from  our  own  thoughts  about  Keats's  genius,  his 
untimely  death  and  the  ivy  having  grown  out  of  his 
grave.    We  know  that  except  for  the  presence  of  such 
thoughts  the  ivy  leaf,  nay  the  whole  ivy  bush,  would 
have  no  such  emotional  power :    similarly  a  lock  of 


Keats's  hair  or  a  scrap  of  his  writing  would  have  no 
effect  on  a  person  who  did  not  know  that  it  was  Keats's 
hair  or  Keats's  writing  ;  nor  upon  a  person  who,  know- 
ing these  things,  was  not  emotionally  sensitive  to  the 
idea  of  the  poet.  The  ivy  does  not  produce  the  Keats- 
emotion  as  a  nettle  stings,  or  a  malaria-mosquito  gives 
fever.  What  works  in  all  this  case  is  not  anything 
intrinsic  in  the  ivy,  but  certain  ideas  which  we  connect 

with  it. 

Now  the  case  is  quite  otherwise  with  the  tapes 
which  have  been  tied  on  the  arm  of  the  wonder-working 
statue  :  they  are  expected  to  cure  rheumatics  or  avert 
accidents  quite  independent  of  aU  mental  associations 
of  the  wearer ;  they  may  be  hung  as  scapulars  round 
the  neck  of  unconscious  babes  or  atheistic  lovers; 
and  similarly  the  various  objets  ffe  pM  which  have 
rubbed    magical    powers    off    the  Loango  sorcerer's 
authentic  paraphernalia  are  expected  to  heal  or  hurt 
quite  independent  of  any  associations  in  the  mind 
of  the  sick  friend  or  the  Sister  Helen'd  enemy. 

The  difference  between  us  sentimental  triflers 
extracting  poetical  pathos  out  of  the  ivy  off  Keats's 
grave  and  those  horn  fide  votaries  of  the  Jouarre  image, 
those  even  more  horn  fide  customers  of  the  Loango 
wizards,  is  that  we  distinguish  between  associations 
existing  only  in  our  mind  and  objects  and  quahties 
existing  outside  it ;  between  our  thoughts  and  what 
we  think  about ;  between  our  feelings  and  what  sets 


222 


Vital  Lies 


our  feelings  going ;  while  these  genuine  beUevers  do 
not  thus  distinguish,  or  even  if  they  do  distinguish 
by  fits  and  starts,  relapse  perpetually  into  that  con- 
fused identification,  whenever  they  are  less  interested 
in  the  nature  of  things  and  more  absorbed  (and  they 
are  always  thus  absorbed  !)  in  themselves  and  their 
own  hopes  and  fears,  and  loves  and  cravings. 

Now  the  sacraments  of  the  Church  are  approached 
in  a  state  of  mind  which  partakes  more  of  that  of  the 
Loango  and  Jouarre  votaries  than  of  the  sentimentaUsts 
steahng  a  leaf  for  the  love  of  Keats.  When  a  CathoUc 
thinks  of  the  Eucharist  he  ceases  to  hold  asunder  the 
notions  Bread  and  Fhsh,  Wine  and  Blood,  each  with 
its  ascendants  and  descendants  and  cognates  leading 
thought  into  opposite  directions.  He  ceases  Ukewise 
to  hold  asunder  the  idea  God  from  the  idea  Man,  the 
idea  then  from  the  idea  now.  He  allows  nine-tenths 
of  these  various  words'  meaning  to  drop  away,  all 
their  incompatible  denotations  to  vanish ;  and  in  so 
doing  he  loses  also  the  clear  meaning  of  the  verb  to  be 
with  its  correlated  not  to  be.  Or  perhaps  (and  this 
seems  psychologically  probable)  the  is  which  has  faded 
away  as  a  connection  between  coincident  quahties 
gets  replaced  in  his  vague  consciousness  by  a  different 
IS,  the  IS  of  /  am,  the  mutually  exclusive  portions  of 
the  two  ideas  being  obKterated  by  the  reaUty  of  his 
own  emotion ;  since  Emotion  and  Action  check  the 
thought  of  whatever  does  not  immediately  concern 


Father  Tyrrell  223 

them ;  moreover,  in  the  presence  of  emotion  and 
action  any  contradictions  outside  their  sphere  lose 
their  importance.  Alluding  to  the  conmion  primitive 
beUef  that  certain  individuals  become  animals  as  soon 
as  they  put  on,  in  ritual  masquerades,  the  skin  of  a 
wolf,  a  tiger  or  a  bear,  M.  Levy-Bruhl  tells  us  that 
these  savages  do  not  trouble  their  heads  whether  the  man 
stops  being  a  man  in  order  to  become  a  tiger,  nor  whether 
he  afterwards  stops  being  a  tiger  in  order  to  become  a 
man  "  ;  and  adds  further  on  :  "  The  aim  and  effect  of 
such  ceremonies  and  dances  is  to  awaken  and  keep  up  .  .  . 
the  sense  of  essential  oneness  (la  communion  par  essence) 
in  which  are  merged  the  present  individual,  the  ancestor 
whom  he  is  sprung  from,  and  the  animal  or  vegetable 
species  which  is  his  totem.  For  our  mentality  these  are 
necessarily  three  distinct  realities,  however  closely  united 
by  kinship.  But  for  the  pre-logical  mentality  of  primitive 
nuin,  the  three  are  one,  without  ceasing  to  be  three.^^ 

But  of  all  similar  explanations  of  the  sacramental 
element  Father  Tyrrell  takes  no  account.  He  is  even 
permanently  at  war  with  Liberal  Protestantism  for 
its  turning  the  Christian  symbols  into  facts  of  the 
human  soul.  According  to  him  God  is  not  consub- 
stantial  with  man's  spirit ;  salvation  is  not  a  state 
of  man's  inner  Ufe  ;  the  sacramental  emotions  are  not, 
like  those  of  art,  emotions  which  man  satisfies  for  him- 
self ;  the  "  Transcendent,"  he  lets  us  know  not  once  but 
continually,  must  not  be  understood  as  the  subjective. 


san 


224 


Vital  Lies 


I 

If 


In  fact  Father  Tyrrell  believes  in  a  dimension,  so  to 
speak,  which  is  neither  material  nor  mental,  which 
participates  in  both  while  being  different  from  either. 
And  in  this  "  transcendental "  dimension  all  contra- 
dictions and  antinomies  melt  into  the  mystic  unity. 


XVI 

The  clue  of  rationalistic  criticism,  which  has  led 
Modernists  so  dangerously  and  heroically  beyond  the 
Church's  estabUshed  boundary  lines,  would  lead  them 
further  still  into  the  continuous  and  homogeneous 
field  of  proven  facts  and  plausible  hypothesis  existing 
in  the  mind  of  the  scientific  laity. 

From  the  discovery  that  scriptural  texts,  instead  of 
being  dictated  by  the  deity,  are  a  patchwork,  even 
like  any  heathen  cycle  of  sagas,  made  of  the  narratives 
of  uncritical  eye-witnesses.  Modernism  has  gone  on 
to  the  discovery  that  those  earhest  Christian  witnesses 
must  have  shared  the  mental  habits  of  their  own 
contemporaries,  nay,  that  the  founder  of  Christianity, 
in  order  to  be  its  founder,  must  have  had  behefs  which, 
80  far  from  being  all-important  to  more  advanced 
mankind,  are  absolutely  incompatible  with  its  in- 
evitable ideas.  Furthermore,  Modernism,  as  repre- 
sented by  Father  Tyrrell,  has  gone  on  to  recognize 
that  the  continuity  in  the  religious  idea  can  be  ob- 


I 


Father  Tyrrell  225 

tained  only  by  rejecting  both  this  hteral  teaching  of 
Christ  and  his  Apostles,  and  the  successive  additions 
and  emendations  made  thereto  by  the  Church,  as  so 
much  historically  explicable  misinterpretation  of  a 
nuclear  group  of  notions  and  practices  equally  suitable 
to  all  times,  but  which  each  time,  taken  separately, 
was  unable  to  assimilate  without  the  vehicle  of  its 
own  added  errors. 

This  explanation,  obtained  by  mere  human  exam- 
ination, and  moreover  based  upon  the  psychological 
and  historical  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  of 
human  ideas  and  institutions,  leads  logically  to  a 
further  rational  belief :  namely,  that  the  nuclear 
groups  of  notions  and  feelings  and  practices  for  which, 
under  the  name  of  "  Religious  Idea  "  Father  Tyrrell 
claims  what  we  may  call  generative  immortality,  is 
(in  so  far  as  it  really  exists)  itself  to  be  explained  by 
what  we  know,  or  shall  get  to  know,  of  man's  more 
or  less  unchanging  or  changing  needs  and  habits.  In 
short,  after  having  proved  that  man  and  not  God  was 
the  Author  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  inspirer  of  Church 
tradition,  we  should  find  that  man  was  the  inventor 
of  revelation  and  of  sacraments,  and  that  the  God 
existing  in  the  Rehgious  "  Idea  "  was,  like  the  re- 
hgious  "  Idea  "  itself,  not  the  Creator,  but  the  creation 
of  Man.  But  Father  Tyrrell,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
never  followed  rational  criticism  to  this,  its  ultimate 
consequence,  but,  on  one  path  after  another  across 


22(^ 


Vital  Lies 


' 


this  continuity  of  rational  conception,  has  suddenly 
stopped  short  before  a  chasm  which  interrupted  his 
passage  :  a  chasm  of  inherited  mystical  behef ,  in- 
explicable only  to  those  who  shared  it.  For  that 
mystical  behef  which  interrupts  Father  Tjrrrell's 
thought  at  the  critical  point  is  itself  a  humanly 
exphcable  phenomenon  of  human  nature. 

The  clue  which  has  led  Father  Tyrrell  so  far,  and 
which  might  have  led  him  and  his  fellow-Modernists 
so  very  much  further,  into  a  region  inaccessible  to 
encychcals  and  excommunications,  that  clue  may  be 
given  a  homely  name  :  whjl  man  is  likely  to  have  done. 
Or,  more  exphcitly :  given  our  knowledge,  historical, 
philological,  anthropological,  psychological,  and  so 
forth,  of  man's  ways  of  proceeding,  how  are  we  to 
explain  the  various  phenomena  grouped  together  as 
the  rehgious  creed  of  the  Koman  CathoKc  Church  ? 

And  now,  having  arrived  at  the  point  where  Father 
Tyrrell  refuses  to  ask  more  questions,  we  must  apply 
our  further  examinations,  not  in  his  company,  but  to 
his  person. 

We  must  ask  ourselves  how,  given  our  knowledge 
of  man  and  mankind,  are  we  to  explain,  not  the  re- 
ligious phenomena  which  Father  Tyrrell  has  examined 
in  the  teeth  of  the  Roman  CathoKc  Church  and  its 
prohibitions  ;  but  the  phenomenon  of  Father  Tyrrell's 
obstinate  though  partial  and  discriminating  fidehty 
to  that  selfsame  Church  of  Rome  ?    And  the  formula 


Father  Tyrrell  227 


of  inquiry  changes  from  "  What  is  mankind  likely  to 
have  done  and  thought,"  to  "  What  is  this  Modernist 
priest  likely  to  have  wished  ?  " 

Thus,  after  a  long  circuit,  we  are  back  again  at  the 
"  Will-to-heliever 

XVII 

"  The  principle  of  Christian  action''  writes  Father 
Tjrrrell,  **  rmkes  for  the  fullest  expansion  of  man's  tran- 
scendental and  spiritual  nature  in  every  direction.  It 
recognizes  the  Divine,  not  only  in  conduct  and  in  relation 
to  man's  moral  progress,  but  also  in  thought  and  feeling  ; 
it  lives  for  the  aesthetic  and  intellectual  as  well  as  for  the 
ethical  "  ought  "—and  ideal.  It  is  the  foe  of  falsehood 
and  of  ugliness  as  well  as  of  wickedness  ;  it  sees  in  all  of 
them  the  principle  of  evil,  death,  and  decay." 

Again,  on  the  next  page  : 

**  The  truth,  then,  that  Christianity  symbolizes  under 
the  temporal  nearness  of  the  End,  is  a  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  the  best  spiritual  life,  the  principle  of  an 
attachment  to  the  world's  highest  interest,  at  once 
strengthened  and  subdued  by  an  attachment  to  an 
eternal  and  transcendent  life,  symbolized  by  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  ..." 

It  would  be  easy  to  cull  from  Father  Tyrrell's  book 
a  httle  anthology  of  passages  hke  the  above,  such  as 
might  have  been  written  by  Professor  James  himself  in 


228 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  229 


11 


ii 


his  most  moralizing  and  citizenly  view  of  Pragmatism. 
But  such  quotations  would  do  injustice  to  the  par- 
ticular kind  of  Will-to-helieve  really  dominant  in  Father 
Tyrrell,  and  really  responsible  for  his  refusal  to  face 
the  logical  corollaries  of  his  application  of  scientific 
thought  to  the  history  and  tenets  of  CathoUc  Chris- 
tianity. For  Father  Tjn-rell  (and  this  is  his  quarrel 
with  that  "  Liberal  Protestantism  "  which,  according 
to  him,  falsifies  the  "  Idea  "  of  Christianity  far  worse 
than  the  most  superstitious  kinds  of  Papistry),  for 
Father  Tjrrrell  does  not  identify  rehgion  with  moraUty  ; 
still  less  does  he  value  it  as  a  vehicle  for  moraUty. 
That  rehgion  should  favour  righteousness  is  but  a 
secondary  advantage  and  a  secondary  confirmation 
due  to  the  accident  (if  I  may  use  this  expression)  of 
the  Divinity  happening  to  have  invented  righteousness 
and  insisting  upon  its  pursuit.  And  in  Father  Tyrrell's 
thought  (which  naturally  identifies  itself  with  the 
"  Rehgious  Idea  "),  rehgion  is  not  there  for  the  sake 
of  morahty,  but  rather  morahty  for  the  sake  of  rehgion.^ 
The  *'  fruits  for  hfe "  are  of  a  less  obvious  sort 
than  those  cultivated  by  the  "  true-in-so-far-forth  "  of 
Professor  James  ;  and  Father  Tjnrell's  Will-to-beheve 

^  '^  So  far  as  religious  ethic  identifies  our  duties  in  life  with  the  Will  of 
Oody  it  asserts  a  neglected  prijiciple  of  Christianity.  But  so  far  as  it 
identifies  the  moral  mth  the  religious  life  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
unth  the  ideal  term  of  an  endless  social  and  moral  process,  it  is  a  flat 
etyniradiction  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ''  ("  Chxistianity  at  the  Cross 
Roads,"  p.  171).     The  nominative  is  religion. 


is  of  a  subtler,  more  venerable  kind,  a  kind  which  was 
infinitely  ancient  long  before  utiUtarianism  was  ever 
erected  into  a  system  ;  and  the  hfe  he  is  aiming  at  is 
not  the  mere  moral,  but  the  spiritual  one. 

"  As  things  are,^'  he  writes  on  page  112,  "  the  only 
test  of  revelation  is  the  test  of  life,  not  merely  of  moral,  hut 
of  spiritual  fruitfulness  in  the  deepest  sense.^^  This, 
to  borrow  Professor  James's  happy  expression,  "  sounds 
very  like  "  the  Pragmatism  of  the  "  Varieties  of  Re- 
hgious Experience."  But  note  the  continuation  of 
the  passage,  with  its  distinction  between  moral  and 
mystical  and  transcendental  needs.  *'  It  (Revelation) 
must  at  once  satisfy  and  intensify  mxinh  mystical  and 
moral  need.  It  must  bring  the  transcendent  nearer  to 
his  thought,  feelings,  and  desires.  It  must  deepen  his 
consciousness  of  union  with  God.^^ 

Let  us  think  over  these  two  sentences,  with  their 
insistence  upon  needs,  which  revelation  is  at  once  to 
satisfy  and  to  intensify ;  and  with  their  unequivocal 
repetition  that  the  value  of  revelation  is  in  its  bringing 
"  the  transcendent " — that  is  to  say,  that  which  tran- 
scends reason — nearer,  not  only  to  Man's  thoughts 
(which,  in  the  case  of  the  unthinkable,  can  never  be 
very  near  !)  but  nearer  also,  and  here  the  nearness  may 
become  close  indeed,  nearer  to  man's  "  feehngs  and 
desires."  Nay,  those  feelings  and  desires  are  to  be 
satisfied ;  for  Revelation,  we  are  told,  "  must  deepen 
consciousness  of  union  with  God." 


•ViTsr' 


230 


Vital  Lies 


And  lest  the  reader  should  not  be  sure  that  Father 
Tyrrell  is  identifying  the  existence  of  what  he  wishes 
with  the  existence  of  his  wish  for  it,  the  passage  ends 
as  follows : 

"  This,  as  we  have  said,  was  the  '  evidence  *  to  which 
Jesus  appealed  in  proof  of  his  *  possession '  by  God's 
spirit.  .  .  .  Sych,  too,  is  the  evidence  of  Christianity 
as  a  personal  religion,  its  power  over  sovls  that  are  already 
Christian  in  sympathy  and  capacity ;  the  soul-compelling 
power  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  Any  other  '  sign,'  be  it 
miracle  or  argument,  will  appeal  only  to  the  faithless 
and  perverse  .  .  .  it  may  change  their  theology,  it  cannot 
change  their  hearts.'' 

Now,  before  examining  the  value  of  such  "  evidence  " 
as  can  "  thus  change  the  heart,"  I  would  open  a  par- 
enthesis about  the  other  sort  of  evidence,  the  one  which 
Jesus  and  Father  Tyrrell  both  make  thus  light  of. 
Old-fashioned  though  it  sound,  I  should  be  extremely 
incHned  to  accept  the  evidence  of  a  miracle,  if  only  a 
miracle  could  be  shown  to  bear  upon  the  point  at 
issue,  and,  moreover,  proved  to  have  really  taken  place. 
For,  after  all,  a  miracle  is  only  an  experiment  by  which 
the  divinity  (hke  some  great  Chemist  or  Physician) 
should  condescend  to  demonstrate  a  certain  proposi- 
tion, such,  for  instance  as  the  consubstantiality  of  the 
eucharistic  wafer  with  Christ's  body,  which  was 
demonstrated  by  the  miracle  of  Bolsena  in  the  year 
1263.    The  evidence  of  a  miracle  when  it  did  happen 


Father  Tyrrell  231 

need  not  be  diminished  by  the  difficulty  of  proving 
that  it  had  happened,  by  the  scarceness  of  such  demon- 
strations on  the  part  of  Omnipotence,  or  even  by  the 
fact,  pointed  out  by  Father  Tyrrell  with  regard  to  the 
Resurrection,  that  miracles  usually  turn  out  to  be  not 
what  has  actually  happened,  but  what  somebody 
could  not  help  expecting  would  happen.  Indeed,  I 
would  point  out  that  Christian  behef  was  originally, 
has  hitherto  been,  and  will  doubtless  (thanks  to  Pope 
Pius  X.)  long  be  founded  upon  miracles  accepted  as 
divine  experiments  which  show  that  certain  unlikely 
statements  were  true. 

This  is  what  unbelievers  and  orthodox  both  think 
about  "  evidence."  Let  us  return  to  Father  Tyrrell's 
views  on  the  subject. 

The  sentences  quoted  above  (and  a  score  of  similar 
ones  which  I  could  quote)  not  only  reject  both  mir- 
aculous demonstration  and  logical  argument  as  suit- 
able only  to  '*  faithless  "  and  "  perverse  "  persons, 
but  leave  no  doubt  as  to  what  in  both  Father  Tyrrell's 
own  views  (and  his  views  of  Christ's  views)  should 
constitute  proper  "  evidence "  to  the  truth  of  the 
Christian  Revelation. 

In  analysing  the  passage  last  quoted,  the  chief  point 
to  be  noted  is  that  the  revelation  of  a  very  particular 
fact,  namely,  the  "  possession  "  of  a  man,  Jesus,  by 
God's  Spirit,  is  proved  to  be  truly  a  revelation  and 
truly  a  revelation  of  a  truth,  by  its  answering  the  need 


232 


Vital  Lies 


^ 


M 


of  those  whom  it  can  satisfy.    The  existence  of  a  given 
fact  [the  fact  of  "  possession  "  of  a  particular  man  in 
that  particular  "transcendent"  way]  is  thus  made 
dependent  on  the  readiness  of  certain  other  people  to 
accept  it.     The  doubts  of  those  not  interested  in  the 
fact  under  discussion  are  dismissed  on  the  score  of 
lack  of  that  bias  in  its  favour ;    and  only  those  are 
accepted  as  judges  who  have  got  that  bias,   those 
"  souls  ab-eady  Christian  in  sympathy  and  capacity." 
This  sounds  paradoxical.     But  Father  Tyrrell  would 
remind  us  that  in  every  branch  of  daily  experience 
truth  is  seen  to  be  acceptable  only  when  it  finds  a 
certain  mental  preparation :  can  a  truth  of  mathematics 
or  physics  be  recognized  by  a  man  totally  ignorant  of 
the  elements  of  science  ?     Evidently  not !    Moreover, 
Father  Tyrrell  would  argue,  does  not  daily  experience 
show  that  the  recognition  of  truth  depends  on  a  desire 
for  truth,  and  is  not  truth  itself  one  of  the  objects  of 
man's  pursuit  and  craving  ? 

Granted!  But  desire  for  truth  in  general,  and 
recognition  of  a  given  truth  in  particular,  are  not  the 
same  thing  as  the  true  existence  of  a  fact.  It  took  a 
great  many  thousand  years  of  intellectual  preparation 
on  the  part  of  mankind  at  large,  and  an  inordinate, 
invincible  desire  for  truth  on  the  part  of  one  or  two 
astronomers,  for  the  recognition  of  the  Earth's  going 
round  the  Sun.  But  the  Sun  and  the  Earth  did  not 
require  to  wait  for  either  that  intellectual  culture  or 


mn 


Father  Tyrrell  233 


that  abstract  love  of  truth  before  assuming  that  par- 
ticular relation  of  going  and  gone  round ;    indeed,  if 
the  earth  had  not  gone  round  the  sun  quite  inde- 
pendent of  anyone  being  prepared  to  recognize  the 
truth  of  its  doing  so,  it  is  conceivable  that  there  might 
have  been  no  persons  capable  or  incapable  of  grasping 
that  particular  truth,  no  persons  with  or  without  a 
desire  for  truth  of  any  kind,  indeed,  no  life,  human, 
animal,  or  vegetable,  preparing  or  not  preparing  for 
the  eventful  recognition  of  that  or  any  other  truth — 
on  this  earth  at  all.    But  behind  this  identification 
(so  unpragmatistically  disregarded  by  the  Sun  and 
Earth)  of  Truth  and  recognition  of  Truth,  there  is 
in  Father  Tyrrell's  soul  (as  there  probably  was  in 
those    "  souls    already    Christian    in    sympathy   and 
capacity  ")  an  identification  of  Truth  with  Righteous- 
ness, and  also  an  identification  of  Trulh  with  the 
Divinity. 

The  first  has  been  the  work  largely  of  professional 
moraUsts,  from  Moses  to  Socrates,  and  from  St  Paul 
to  Tolstoi,  in  the  last  of  whom  it  has  culminated  in 
the  declaration  that  the  only  true  science  is  the  know- 
ledge of  right  and  wrong,  and  that  all  the  onomies  and 
ologies  are  false  sciences  because  they  do  not  make 
man  more  moral.  With  this  morahzing  tendency 
has  united  the  century-long  habit  of  theological 
definition  and  condemnation,  punishing  error  as  sin 
against  God,  and  identifying  truth  with  the  Church's 


■J 

m 


234 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  235 


pronouncements  andwith  whatever  the  Church  accepted 
as  the  word  of  God. 

Of  all  these  kinds  of  truths-in-so-far-foHh,  there  are 
traces  in  Father  Tyrrell's    thought  and  very  visibly 
in  that  typical  quotation.    But  there  is  a  "  true-in-so- 
far-forth"  infinitely  more   subtle,  more    difficult    to 
seize  in  its  fluctuating  yea-and-nay,  in  and  out  ap- 
pearances and  disappearances ;    a  true-in-so-far-forth 
which,  in  Father  TyrreU's  case,  is  not  only  the  legacy 
of  centuries  and  centuries  of  rehgious  habits,  but  also 
the  theoretic  gifts  of  an  ultra-modem  philosophy,  of 
that  Bergsonism  (faithful  or  not  to  Bergson's  own 
intentions)  of  which  Father  TyrreU  was  an  adept  and 
intended  to  become  an  expounder. 
Let  us  try  to  catch  a  sight  of  this  Protean  thing. 
The  Reader  will  remember  that  in  the  first  quota- 
tion just  given,  Father  TyrreU  says  that  reveUuion 
must  "  at  once  satisfy  and  intensify  man's  mystical 
and  moral  need,"  as  if  a  revelation,  instead  of  referring 
to  some  fact,  in  this  case  Christ's  divinity,  were  a  revela- 
tion, i.e.  a  true  revelation,  in  virtue  of  its  suitability 
to  the   spiritual  wants  of  the  hstener ;    and  as  if, 
therefore,  the  revelation  in  question  would  have  been 
untrue  if  it  embodied  facts  which— instead  of  "  bring- 
ing the  transcendent  nearer  to  his  (man's)  thoughts 
and  feehngs  and  desires,"  and  "  deepening  the  con- 
sciousness   of    union    with    God  "—had    necessarily 
produced  the  very  reverse  effect.    And  lest  the  Reader 


should  consider  this  passage  as  ambiguous,  and  refuse 
to  construe  "  revelation  must  "  into  "  revelation  must 
do  all  this  in  order  to  he  true,"  I  will  repeat  the  end 
of  the  quotation : 

"  This—''  [i.e.  "  satisfying  and  intensifying  man's 
mystical  and  moral  need,"  *'  bringing  the  transcendent 
nearer  to  man's  thought  and  feelings  and  desires," 
**  deepening  his  consciousness  of  union  with  God "] 
"  this  was  the  evidence  to  which  Jesus  appealed  in  proof 
of  His  possession  by  God's  spirit.  .  .  .  Suoh,  too,  is  the 
evidence  of  Christianity  as  a  persoruil  religion." 

All  this  is  what  Father  TyrreU  sums  up  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  passage  as  the  "  test  of  life,"  '*  which  is, 
as  things  are,  the  only  test  of  revelation."  If,  there- 
fore, the  revelation  aUeged  by  Christ  had  been,  let 
us  say,  the  one  which  came  to  Nietzsche  as  he  sat 
under  that  rock  in  the  Alps,  the  atrocious  revelation 
of  the  Everlasting  Return  and  its  hopelessness,  then 
that  revelation,  not  standing  this  "  test  of  life,"  would 
have  been  untrue. 

Mr  SchiUer,  in  a  remarkable  passage  of  one  of  his 
Pragmatistic  essays,  has  indeed  asserted  that  there 
could  not  exist  a  thoroughly  depressing  and  demorahz- 
ing  truth,  because  mankind  would  have  stamped  it  out. 
But  I  do  not  know  whether  Father  TyrreU  would  go 
so  far.  There  was,  indeed,  no  need  for  facing  this 
painful  alternative,  for  Father  TyrreU  had  another 
line  of  thought,  or  rather  another  confusion  of  lines 


ill 


( 


236 


Vital  Lies 


i 

1 

I 


ii 


of  thought,  in  which  to  find  safety.     On  page  173 
of  his  book  there  stands  the  following  passage  : 

"//  trvth  he  the  correct  arUidpation  of  a  possible 
experience,  it  is  our  spiritual  needs  that  are  true  to  God." 
I  have  meditated  many  hours  on  the  logical  contents 
of  this  sentence  which,  with  its  Peircian  pragmatic 
beginning,  bears  so  agreeable  a  promise  of  "  making  our 
ideas  clear."    And  I  cannot  yet  unravel  whether  its 
technical  structure  impUes  that  God  is  an  experience 
foreseen  hy  our  spiritual  needs  which  are  therefore  proved 
to  be  true,  or  that  our  spiritual  needs  being  an  experi- 
ence, God  is  therefore  a  correct  anticipation  of  them  and 
in  so  far  true.    But  Father  Tyrrell  has  reminded  us 
elsewhere  that  spiritual  needs  and  their  satisfaction 
are  data  of  experience  as  much,  at  least,  as  what  we 
caU  the  facts  of  science ;   Bergsonian  philosophy  has 
shadowed  forth  that  reason  is  probably  a  mere  blunder- 
ing adjunct  of  action,  and  that  it  is  only  by  leaning 
over  our  obscure  consciousness,  and  Kstening  to  the 
confused  hum  of  instincts  and  impulses  that  we  can 
hope  to  learn  something  of  the  secrets  of  reaUty.    And 
80,  letting  alone  aU  attempts  at  hteral  and  logical 
interpretation,  I  think  we  may  understand  darkly, 
catch  gUmpses  of  the  flickering  coming  and  going  of 
Father  TyrreU's  thought,  if  we  content  ourselves  with 
repeating  that  mystic  formula  :  "  If  truth  be  the  correct 
anticipation  of  a  possible  experience,  it  is  our  spiritual 
needs  that  are  true  to  God.'' 


Father  Tyrrell  237 

I  have  called  the  formula  mystic ;  and  mystic  it 
has  every  right  to  be.  For  are  we  not  dealing  with 
what  transcends  human  reason,  with  an  order  of  things 
whose  sacraments  partake  of  contradictory  natures 
and  exist  both  inside  and  outside  of  space  and  time, 
where  what  is  believed  has  compelling  powers  ^  upon 
what  exists,  a  region  (at  once  of  reality  and  of  thought) 
where,  as  Goethe's  Chorus  Mysticus  tells  us,  temporal 
things  are  but  a  symbol,  where  the  unattainable 
becomes  fulfilment,  and  the  inexpressible  becomes  fact : 

"  Alles  Vergdngliche 
1st  nur  tin  Gleichniss  ; 
Das  Unzuldngliche 
Hier  wird's  Ereigniss 
Das  Uribeschreibliche 
Hier  isfs  gethan" 


XVIII 


"  //  truth  be  the  correct  anticipation  of  a  possible  experience,  it  is  our 
spiritual  needs  that  are  true  to  God." 

As  if  in  explanation  of  this  mysterious  pattern  of 
words.  Father  Tyrrell  more  than  once  reminds  us  that 

*  W.  James  :  "  God  himself,  in  short,  may  draw  vital  strength  and 
increase  of  very  being  from  our  fidelity."  Professor  James  did  not 
see  that  belief  in  such  a  God  would  be  a  comfort  only  if  God  were 
not  the  Creator,  but  a  fellow-creature ;  not  responsible  for  the 
Universe  and  its  evils,  but  trying  to  break  loose  from  those  evils. 
In  fact,  part  of  a  Manichean  dualism,  or  subject  to  an  antique  Fate. 
Or  was  Professor  James's  Pluralism  merely  a  revived,  a  homeo- 
pathic Manicheism  ? 


238 


Vital  Lies 


I 


mental  habits,  desires,  in  short,  "  spiritual  needs,"  are 
as  much  facts  of  experience  as  anjrthing  we  account 
knowledge  of  the  world  outside  us.  Undoubtedly ; 
but  the  experience  of  which  spiritual  needs  form  part 
is  experience  of  ourselves,  of  our  own  inner  reaUty. 
The  experience  of  the  not-ourselves  is  a  different  thing, 
and  the  two  kinds  of  experience  are  by  no  means 
always  in  the  relation  of  mirrored  and  mirroring 
surface.  The  existence  of  a  need,  spiritual  or  material, 
testifies  to  the  previous  existence  of  a  group  or  sequence 
of  facts  standing  to  this  "  need  "  in  the  relation  of 
cause.  But  this  pre-existing  group  of  causes  of  a  need 
is  by  no  means  necessarily  the  same  as  the  group 
of  phenomena  which  would  satisfy  that  need ;  the 
desire  for  food  is  not  caused  by  the  pre-existence  of 
food,  but  by  the  pre-existence  of  certain  organic  con- 
ditions often  implying  rather  the  absence  of  food  than 
its  presence,  and  producing  that  presence  of  food  only 
indirectly  and  in  no  inevitable  manner.  That  in  a 
great  many  cases  a  need  should  answer  to  really  ex- 
isting objects ;  that  those  really  existing  objects 
should,  in  a  yet  larger  number  of  cases,  be  such  as  to 
put  an  end  to  the  need,  is  exphcable  by  racial  adaptation 
to  surroundings,  individuals  with  unquenchable  needs, 
and  unquenchable  needs  in  individuals  themselves, 
having  been  eUminated  under  the  competitive  stress 
of  needs  which  it  was  possible  to  quench.  But  this 
adaptative  coincidence*^does  not  justify  the  assump- 


Father  Tyrrell  239 

tion  that  the  existence  of  a  need  implies  either  the 
existence  of  the  wherewithal  to  that  need's  satisfaction, 
or  that  the  need,  if  conscious,  is  correct  as  to  the 
nature  of  that  satisfying  wherewithal ;  indeed,  so  soon 
as  representation  of  a  satisfying  object  accompanies 
desires,  the  mere  feehng  of  want,  although  in  itself 
perhaps  the  correct  expression  of  an  organic  state, 
is  subject  to  an  association,  even  an  interpretation 
which  may  happen  to  be  incorrect. 

But  if  a  "  need  "  does  not  prove  the  possible  existence 
of  its  object,  still  less  does  the  existence  of  a  "  need  " 
prove  that  the  object  is  already  existent.  A  "  need  '* 
may  be,  often  is  (otherwise  there  would  have  been  no 
human  progress)  a  brand  new  group  of  "  lackings  ;  "  a 
need  may  be  an  unprecedented  need  due  to  unprece- 
dented causes — ^indeed,  to  be  thus  new  and  unpre- 
cedented has  been  the  mark  of  every  "  higher  "  need, 
therefore  of  every  spiritual  one :  does  not  Father 
T5n*rell  himself  deny  the  spiritual  element  to  the 
"  religions  "  of  primeval  man  ?  Nay,  more  ;  a  need 
may  be  such  that  its  object  inevitably  eludes  its  pur- 
suit, it  may  be  a  need  for  more,  let  us  say  a  need  of 
justice  or  perfection  :  does  the  existence  of  this  need 
prove  the  pre-existence  of  sufficient  justice  or 
perfection  ? 

Perhaps  Father  Tyrrell  would  answer  boldly  :  "  Yes  ; 
the  need  of  justice  and  perfection  proves  the  existence 
of  such  justice  and  perfection  in  God."    But  this  is 


240 


Vital  Lies 


using  the  existence  of  God  as  proof  in  an  argument 
itself  intended  to  prove  God's  existence  by  the  sup- 
posed relation  between  needs  and  the  wherewithal  to 
their  satisfaction. 

As  a  psychological  fact,  such  an  unconscious  argu- 
ment in  a  circle  can  be  frequently  traced  in  theology 
(as    elsewhere)   and    even   in    the   theology  of    such 
a  psychologist  as  Father  Tyrrell.     The  unravelling  of 
our  premises,  the  separating  of  our  standpoints,  and 
the  holding  asunder  of  our  many  successive  subjects 
of  discourse,   are  intellectual  tools  which,  hke  per- 
spective and  foreshortening,  take  thousands  of  years 
to  fashion  and  master ;    and  despite  all  our  treatises 
of  logic,  we  are  still  in  danger  of  thinking,  so  to  speak, 
a  full  face  eye  in  a  profile  head ;   we  are  perpetually 
mistaking  our  habitual  hypothesis  for  facts  in  their 
own  support.    The  theological  habit  has  been,  and  is, 
to  think  not  merely  of  God  as  pre-existent,  but  also 
of  man's  faculties,  hence  his  "  needs  "  as  created  by 
God  with  distinct  reference  to  God's  own  existence ; 
hence  a  need  for  God,  being  instituted  by  God,  points 
with  the  cogency  of  a  circular  argument  to  the  reaUty 
of  God.     And  this  circular  manner  of  thinking  has 
doubtless  been  increased  by  the  verbalism — that  is  to 
Bay,  the  deficient  analysis  of  meanings  in  such  dis- 
cussions.   The  habit  of  speaking  of  a  need  for  some- 
thing, has  overlaid  and  hidden  the  fact  of  a  need  m 
sememe;    and  verbal  co-existence  of  desire  and  its 


Father  Tyrrell  241 


object  has  been  taken  as  representing  a  real  co- 
existence outside  mere  words,  or,  at  the  best,  mere 
verbal  thought. 

I  have  applied  the  word  pre-existence  to  the  where- 
withal of  satisfying  a  need,  as  the  pre-existence,  for 
instance,  of  a  divinity.  I  wish  to  return  to  the  question 
of  pre-existence  insisted  on  in  all  such  theological  argu- 
ments, because  it  just  happens  that,  in  at  least  half  of 
all  cases  we  know  of,  "  need,"  want  or  desire,  inci- 
dentally shows  that  its  object  does  not  pre-exist 
because  it  sets  man  making  that  object ;  shows,  more- 
over, that  the  object  is  not  independent  of  the  need, 
since  the  object  is  made  conformably  to  that  need. 
For  desire,  which  is  what  the  old  proverb  mongers 
meant  by  necessity,  is  the  mother  of  invention. 

And  thus  if  man's  soul  needs,  craves  for,  insists  upon, 
certain  hopes  and  consolations  which  (it  is  Father 
TjTrell  himself  who  repeats  it)  are  not  warranted  by 
his  rational  knowledge  of  the  existing  universe,  may 
we  not  suppose  that  when  we  find  such  a  "  need  '* 
satisfied,  it  is,  as  in  the  case  of  arts  and  industries, 
simply  because  man  has  made  for  himself  what  he 
wanted ;  and  because  a  "  spiritual  need  "  is  a  need 
whose  satisfaction  can  be  compassed  without  help  of 
objective  reaUty,  and  merely  by  the  presence  of  thought 
and  feehngs.  And  is  it  not  consonant  with  all  that 
we  know  of  man's  cravings  and  makings,  that  reUgion 
should  prove  itself  merely  one  of  man's  great  crafts. 


2^2 


Vital  Lies 


the  great  self-unconscious  craft  which  has  provided, 
among  many  other  much  needed  things,  just  those 
hopes  and  consolations  which  Father  Tyrrell  finds 
in  the  CathoHc  Christian  revelation  such  as  he 
accepts  it  ? 

In  this  sense  the  anticipation  of  a  particular  ex- 
perience would  indeed  prove  the  true  existence  of  our 
spiritual  needs.  But  this  humdrum  rational  pro- 
position is  not  in  the  least  equivalent  to  what  I  have 
ventured  to  call,  on  the  analogy  of  certain  symbohcal 
interlacings  of  Knes  and  of  circles,  the  mysterious, 
nay,  the  cabahstic  pattern  into  which  Father  Tyrrell 
has  woven  the  same  words. 


XIX 

"  The  Seraph  Contemplatum  " 

The  growing  recognition  by  philosophers  (ordinary 
human  beings  having  long  taken  it  for  granted)  that 
Man  has  other  needs  than  those  of  mere  reason,  that 
life  consists  of  feeUng  and  action  more  than  of  thought, 
and  that  there  are  other  imperatives  besides  the 
rational — this  growing  and  now  overwhelming  recog- 
nition, has,  of  course,  served  as  explanation  and  apology 
of  the  various  Wills-to-beUeve  and  Wills-to-make- 
Others-believe. 

But  in  all  this  talk  of  man's  emotional  wants  our 


Father  Tyrrell  243 


obscurantists  overlook  that  there  exists  a  way  of 
satisfying  the  soul's  cravings  other  than  that  of  beUef  : 
the  way  of  Art.  Bent  upon  keeping  or  reinstating,  or 
(as  we  shall  see  in  the  case  of  M.  Sorel's  "  Syndicalist 
Myth  "  )  making  afresh  some  kind  of  unrational  belief, 
they  do  not  perceive  that  a  good  half  of  all  mythology 
is  not  dogma,  but  poetry,  a  good  half  of  ritual  is  Art ; 
that  contemplation  does  not  imply  the  question  of 
true  and  false,  and  that  the  legitimate  satisfaction  of 
our  wants,  spiritual  as  well  as  temporal,  is  not  through 
beheving  which  we  cannot,  in  so  far  as  is  genuine, 
conmiand,  but  through  making — that  is,  through  the 
creation  in  the  world  outside  or  the  world  within,  of 
those  things,  those  shapes,  those  satisfactions,  whereof 
we  stand  in  need.  Thus,  in  the  Will-to  Believe  there 
has  always  lurked  a  portion,  or  a  particle,  of  a  nobler 
essence :   the  Will,  if  I  may  call  it  so,  to  Contemplate. 

It  is  to  contemplation,  to  contemplative  selection 
and  concentration  that  we  owe  all  poetry,  all  Art,  all 
disinterested  spirituality ;  indeed,  the  spiritual  hfe  in 
the  psychological  sense,  is  essentially  the  life  of 
contemplation. 

All  practically  tends  to  be  one-sided  and  perfunctory 
because  it  sees  in  things  only  so  many  means  to  our 
own  constantly  changing  and  partial  ends :  the  least 
possible  time  and  attention  are  given  because  time 
and  attention  are  wanted  for  the  next  adjustment. 
And  this  perfunctoriness  of  practicality  may  perhaps 


244 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  245 


be  increased  by  an  actual  self-pcNwessing  and  self- 
developing  instinct,  bidding  the  soul  hurry  until  it 
can  find  refreshment,  repose,  purification  and  renewal 
in  those  visions  which  it  makes  to  satisfy  its  own  need 
for  more  beauty  and  more  righteousness  than  reality 
as  yet  supplies  :  contemplation  refits  us  for  prac- 
tice, and  practice,  in  its  turn,  finds  its  fruition  in 
contemplation. 

Such  contemplation  is  an  act  of  choice,  in  the  sense 
that  it  answers  to  permanent  and  co-ordinated  pre- 
ferences ;  and  it  is  an  act  of  will  in  so  far  as  it  includes 
directing  and  steadying  of  our  attention,  excluding 
and  intensifying. 

Such  contemplation  of  what  we  have  ourselves 
selected  and  co-ordinated  is,  I  believe,  the  spiritual, 
as  distinguished  from  the  utihtarian  or  merely  person- 
ally emotional,  essence  of  all  high  religions.  The 
contemplation,  steady  and  reiterated,  of  what,  under 
the  name  of  Zeus,  is  vast  and  beautiful  and  terrible 
in  the  material  firmament ;  under  the  name  of  Jehovah, 
of  what  is  irresistible  in  moral  discipline  and  social 
law  ;  under  the  name  of  Christ  and  Mary,  of  the  purity 
and  tenderness,  the  brotherly  and  motherly  loving 
kindness,  of  which  we  do  not  get  enough  in  Ufe  ;  under 
the  name  of  Buddha  (who  knows  ?)  of  the  insignificance 
of  our  own  fife,  the  indifference  of  the  Universe,  the 
levelling  and  obUterating  power  of  death,  to  feel  which 
gives  us  patience  and  peace. 


i 


Such  contemplation  does  not  imply  belief.  We  can 
get  the  good  of  these  symbols  while  knowing  that  they 
are  made  solely  by  ourselves.  It  is  all  this  which 
Pragmatists  misunderstand  when  they  speak  of  true 
to  our  wants,  using  the  word  true  in  the  sense,  which  is 
not  its  sense,  of  fiUingness  to  something  asked  for  and 
expected,  as  when  we  say  that  a  note  is  true,  meaning 
in  tune,  that  is,  precisely  what  it  should  be.  Art  and 
poetry,  contemplation  of  all  kinds,  draw  upon  reality 
for  their  material;  but  their  creations  are  outside 
reality,  and  hence  yon  side  of  true  and  urUrue. 

Walking  among  the  olive  yards  of  Val  di  Greve 
(with  distant  profile  of  pine  woods  against  the  sky),  I 
was  met  this  morning  by  the  sounds  of  funeral  bells, 
and  the  sudden  recollection  that  it  was  the  Eve  of  All 
Souls.  The  peasants  along  the  roads  are  going  to 
visit  their  dead ;  and  the  little  desolate  village  ceme- 
teries must  be  full  of  the  bitter  scent  of  their  chrysan- 
themum garlands,  all  soaked  like  the  faded  vines,  the 
fallen  leaves,  in  the  death  of  the  summer.  I  know  it 
all  so  well;  know  it  moreover,  as  feeling.  I  feel 
profoundly  united  to  something  in  it  all,  in  these  rites, 
these  creeds  which  are  alien  to  me.  And  thinking  of 
Father  Tjm-eU,  and  the  whole  of  this  discussion  about 
beliefs  and  believing,  it  comes  home  to  me  that  every 
one  of  us  with  any  imaginative  sensitiveness  and 
historical  culture  (and  more  and  more  as  both  of  them 


246 


Vital  Lies 


increase)  must  in  this  manner  partake  in  the  religions 
of  other  folk,  of  other  times,  and  vaguely,  even  in  the 
dim  forgotten  ones.  Partake  not  in  Christianity  only, 
but  in  the  Paganism  beyond  it ;  worship  Apollo,  Apollo 
cleansed  of  his  oracle-shop  venaUty  and  trickery, 
clarified  to  the  pure  poetry  of  sun-kissed  Delphic 
rocks  and  of  filleted  Pheidian  gravity  and  loveliness ; 
Apollo  and  Demeter  quite  as  much  as  Jesus  and  Mary. 
They  are  all  cherished,  the  Divine  Ones,  beUeved  in  as 
shrined  in  our  spirit,  as  shrines,  also,  of  our  spirit. 
And  is  this  not  enough  ? 


XX 


I  fear  not.  ReUgion,  with  whatever  of  Art  and  of 
contemplative  thought  it  has  aUied  itself,  is  bom  not 
of  Man's  strength  but  of  his  weakness.  It  is,  essen- 
tially, the  category  of  our  thinking  (if  thinking  we  may 
call  it )  where  wishes  are  fulfilled ;  fulfilled  not  by 
imposing  our  will  upon  reahties,  or  creating  a  world  of 
noble  appearances,  but  by  brooding  over  those  wishes, 
those  wants  and  achings  in  our  own  heart.  ReUgion 
provides  for  the  mortal  want  which  cannot  provide  for 
itself  :  it  promises  more  of  whatsoever  is  stinted — more 
love,  more  justice,  more  hfe  ;  the  very  promise  arising 
from  the  felt  insufficiency.  The  understanding  and 
sympathy  which  it  brings  is  bom  of  the  loneUness  of 


M/ 


m 


Father  Tyrrell  247 

the  lonely ;  the  balm  which  it  pours  into  the  wounds 
is  made  of  their  smarting ;  as  in  Browning's  poem, 
the  strength  which  cows  the  tyrant  is  but  his  victim's 
weakness. 

Above  all.  Religion  ministers  to  one  of  our  deepest 
needs  :   it  gives  the  sense  of  reciprocity.     Herein  it  is 
different  from  what  we  call  Poetry  or  Art.    If  I  get 
aesthetic   and   moral   satisfaction    by   contemplating 
such  quahties  and  associations  as  are  lovable  in,  let  us 
say,  Apollo  or  St  Francis,  it  is  I  who  do  all  the  loving. 
Apollo  or  St  Francis  can  do  me  good,  but  through  my 
own  doing,  since  I  have  to  a  certain  extent,  made  or 
re-made  him.     But  human  hearts  are  not  to  be  satisfied 
by  their  own  conscious  activities,  and  human  creatures 
bring  into  rehgious   contemplation   that  need,   that 
habit    of    reciprocity    obtaining    among    themselves. 
They  want  not  only  to  love,  but  to  be  loved.    They 
do  not  seek  consolation  from  mere  refreshing  loveliness 
and   nobihty.    The   consolation   they   crave   is   that 
given  to  him  whom  his  mother  comforteth.    For  them 
love  must  be  loving  and  being  loved.     And  all  devout- 
ness  turns  to  some  lover-Uke  or  filial  relation.     Thus  far 
the  human  need  for  reciprocity.    But,  at  the  same 
time,   rehgious   persons   require   also   community   of 
feeling,  or  the  illusion,  the  feehng,  of  community  of 
feeUng.    They  would  indeed  hke  to  be  the  best  beloved 
child,  but  they  also  want  other  children,  brethren, 
with  whom  to  love  in  company.    For  human  creatures 


-I  i 


I 


248 


Vital  Lies 


feel  insecure  and  lost  by  themselves.  They  require 
almost  as  much  as  light  and  bodily  warmth,  the  sense 
that  others  are  thinking  and  feehng  like  themselves ; 
a  want,  this  of  community  of  feehng,  so  deep  in 
us  all  that  we  satisfy  it  all  through  our  daily  Hfe 
by  the  most  obvious  hoodwinkings  and  ostrich- 
like proceedings.  For  it  is  tiring,  tiring  Hke  a  low 
temperature,  to  know  oneself  alone  in  a  way  of 
thinking  or  feehng,  and  to  muster  up  the  energy 
requisite  to  go  on  with  that  thought  or  that  feeling 
uncompanioned.  ... 

This  need  for  community  or  companionship  is 
satisfied  by  that  (considerably  fictitious  and  mis- 
leading) abstraction,  the  Church  ;  and  by  the  thought 
of  miUions  of  fellow-creatures  who  are  known  to  agree 
in  our  thought  and  feehng,  or  perhaps  merely  who  are 
not  supposed  to  be  disagreeing  therewith  !  The  other 
poor  httle  brethren  gathered  with  us  under  the 
Madonna's  cloak  (as  in  Pier  della  Francesca's  fresco 
and  the  Venetian  gate  rehefs)  keep  us  warm  quite  as 
much  as  the  great  mantle  itself ;  and  are,  perhaps, 
only  one-half  less  imaginary  than  the  great  gracious 
Mother  herself. 

That  cloak  of  the  Madonna  is  the  church  of  brick 
and  mortar,  as  well  as  the  abstract  church  mihtant  or 
triumphant ;  the  concrete  church  whose  aesthetic 
unity  of  plan,  of  hghting  and  enclosure,  makes  us  think 
that  the  old  crones  and  fleshly-looking   priests   are 


Father  Tyrrell  249 

feeling  and  thinking  as  we  do !  And  that  material 
edifice  satisfies  us  by  the  sense  that  if  we  have  carried 
our  sorrows  there,  every  one  else  has  done,  and  is 
doing,  so ;  the  empty  nave  and  aisles,  the  dusty 
comers  where  ghmmer  shrine  lamps  are  full  of  sorrow- 
ing desires.  We  feel  that ;  and  we  do  not  feel  (for 
feeling  selects  what  it  likes)  that  all  these  sorrows  and 
desires  would  in  reahty  conflict  with  our  own  quite  as 
much  as  concord  with  them.  We  forget  in  that  church 
how,  in  the  houses  and  streets  and  the  fields,  burdens 
are  not  only  shared,  but,  the  heavier  and  more  numerous 
they  are,  also  cruelly  loaded  on  other  shoulders.  There 
is  in  religion,  whether  in  the  brick  and  mortar  church 
or  in  the  abstract  Christianity  or  Cathohcism,  much 
of  that  diffuse  emotion,  suggestive  but  unlabelled, 
which  music  awakens,  and  of  which  each  can  appro- 
priate and  share  (or  think  that  he  shares)  whatever 
he  pleases. 

Whereas  to  make  one's  sanctuaries  for  oneself  and 
dwell  in  them  alone  ;  to  shape  an  Apollo  of  the  ivory 
and  gold  of  order  and  lucidity,  throwing  away  all  the 
baser  material ;  to  paint  a  Madonna  on  the  pure 
gold  ground  of  whatever  great  love  oneself  may  ever 
have  felt — that  is  a  rare,  a  difficult,  and  to  the 
taste  of  most  human  creatures,  an  unprofitable 
business.  They  do  not  want  contemplative  visions, 
but  authorised  delusions  and  miracles.  Rehgion 
deals   in    miracles   because   it   ministers   to  helpless 


2SO 


Vital   Lies 


hopefulness.    In  both  senses  of  Goethe's  ambiguous 
words : 

"  Das  Umiddngliche 
Hier  mrd's  Ereigniss" 

Through  it  not  only  is  the  unattainable  attained,  but 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  that  German  word,  the 
insufficierU  is  made  sufficing.  For  one  of  the  functions 
of  religion  is  to  furnish  not  only  the  impossible  that 
man  cannot  reach,  but  also  the  mere  more,  demanded 
by  his  poverty  and  hunger :  Uke  Jesus,  Religion  does 
not  only  raise  the  Dead  and  make  the  BHnd  to  see ; 
it  turns  the  water  at  Cana  into  wine,  and  feeds  great 
multitudes  with  seven  loaves  and  a  few  little  fishes. 
The  want  becomes  belief  in  its  own  satisfaction. 

That  any  one  should  feel  what  religion  must  be,  and 
yet  not  have  it,  is  a  surprise  to  the  genuine  beUevers 
among  one's  friends ;  and,  at  times,  alas,  a  source  of 
vain  hopes  and  disappointed  misunderstanding.  If 
you  feel  reUgion  Uke  that,  they  will  sometimes  say. 
Why,  then  you  are  religious.  Alas,  dear  friends,  it  is 
because  I  feel  what  religion  is,  all  that  it  gives  and 
saves,  that  I  know  that  religion  must  be  made  by  Man. 


XXI 

Psychological  analysis  and  observation  will  teach 
us  more  and  more  to  reinstate  the  (in  our  spiritual 


Father  Tyrrell  251 


life)  negative  factor,  which  is  often  stronger  than  the 
positive  factor,  although  hidden  by  the  positive 
factor's  greater  .  .  .  well,  by  the  positive  factor's  posi- 
tiveness.  Thus,  under  the  positive  heading  "  Will-to- 
BeUeve  "  there  comes  in  an  all-important  neglected 
negation,  "  the  Will-Not-to-Disbelieve." 

This  is,  I  think,  one  of  the  dominant  instincts  of 
the  soul,  because  removal  from  a  position  of  habitual 
thought  to  another  is  one  of  the  most  disruptive  and 
painful  efforts  (judging  by  the  feeling  of  it,  I  might  have 
said  of  bodily  efforts)  we  can  be  called  on  to  make ; 
disruptive  and  painful  in  proportion  as  our  thought 
is  organic  and  organised ;  rooted  in  our  nature  and 
rich  in  ramifications.  It  happens  sometimes  that  we 
can  watch  ourselves,  obUged  to  make  this  effort,  and 
shirking  it  with  the  unreasoning  ingenuity  which 
shirks  all  kinds  of  discomforts  :  we  are  holding  on, 
shrinking,  and,  at  the  same  time  that  we  cling  to  the 
old,  laying  hold  of  something  else  and  shifting  our 
intellectual  weight  on  to  that.  We  get  to  think  the 
other  thought,  but  only  by  averting  our  eyes  from  its 
otherness ;  calling  it  by  the  same  name  in  order  to 
keep  up  the  comfortable,  Hfe-saving  sense  of  famili- 
arity ;  or  else  stealthily  moving,  on  to  that  new  and 
hated  bit  of  spiritual  ground,  our  pet  Lares,  or  our 
favourite  heirlooms. 

It  is  not  the   pleasure   or   advantage  of  what  we 
have  not  yet  enjoyed,  it  is  the  habit  of  what  in  many 


u    \ 


^ 


252 


Vital  Lies 


Father  Tyrrell  253 


cases  we  may  have  almost  ceased  to  enjoy  which  is 
at  the  bottom  of  much  "  will-to-beUeve."  Thus,  as 
remarked,  will-to-beUeve  can,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
be  analysed  down  into  mll-not-to-dishelieve. 

It  would  seem  to  be  thus  with  Modernists  :  they 
will  give  up  the  unity  and  tradition  of  the  Church, 
if  only  they  may  consider  themselves  as  the  reposi- 
tories of  that  tradition  and  the  restorers  of  that  unity. 
They  will  give  up  Christianity  if  only  .  .  .  well,  if 
only  you  leave  them  Christ.  Or,  rather,  they  will  give 
up  Christ  if  only  you  will  leave  them  the  name  of 
Christ. 

And  naturally  ;  for  that  name  of  Christ  has  become 
for  them,  not  the  poor  thing  they  themselves  mean  by 
symbol,  but  what  psychology  means  by  that  term : 
an  "  open  sesame  "  for  certain  emotional  phenomena. 


XXII 

Will-not-to-DisbeUeve,  cUnging  to  habitual  and 
beloved  practices  and  formulas  ;  Will-to-Contemplate, 
craving  for  whatever  helps,  by  ready-made  and  time- 
enriched  symbol,  to  steady  without  imprisoning  our 
thought  of  righteousness  and  beauty  and  harmony, 
of  aU  wherewith  present  reahty  whets,  without  satis- 
fying, our  hunger  ;  Will  (and  this  is  the  most  difficult 
to  unravel)  Will  or  Wish,  mistaken  for  its  own  fulfil- 


ment, lover's  dream,  mystic's  prayer,  which  is  its  own 
fancied  and  felt  reaUsation ;  wish  for  immortality, 
salvation,  for  God,  creating  in  man's  thought  another 
world,  a  state  of  being  redeemed,  and  a  deity  according 
to  our  heart's  desire.  All  these  are  the  various  kinds 
of  "  Will-to-beheve "  which  arrest  Father  Tyrrell 
and  his  fellow-Modernists  on  those  scientific  roads 
converging  towards  absolute  freedom  of  thought. 
But  besides  these,  or  mingled  in  them,  or  perhaps 
sunmiing  them  up  while  separate  ("  not  a  third  sound 
but  a  star  ")  there  is  the  Will-not-to-leave-the-Church. 

The  Church  :  not  merely  a  certain  body  of  beUefe ; 
not  merely  the  Church  spiritual  in  the  psychological 
not  transcendental  sense ;  but  the  Church  historical, 
human,  social :  the  Church  made  of  fellow-worshippers, 
nav,  the  Church  of  brick  and  mortar,  or  ashlar  or  marble ; 
the  Church  which  is  the  visible  Aesthetic  equivalent,  in 
its  uphfting  or  brooding  forms,  in  its  serenity  of  white 
light  or  its  soothing  mystery  of  darkness,  of  all  the 
soul  has  ever  imagined  of  moral  peace,  lucidity  and 
harmony ;  the  Church  which,  in  the  squaUidest 
countries,  is  alone  swept  and  garnished  and  purified 
with  incense,  and  in  the  poorest  has  vessels  of  silver, 
and  fresh-washed  hnen ;  the  Church  where  the  dead 
have  lain  for  centuries  under  the  slabs,  and  into  which 
all  the  ages  of  man  have  entered,  and  knelt,  or  been 
carried  as  infants  or  as  corpses. 


254 


Vital  Lies 


XXIII 


The  day  before  yesterday,  one  of  the  first  wintry 
afternoons,  I  went,  towards  twilight,  into  some  churches, 
and  preferably  into  those  humbler  ones  where  piety 
gUdes  in  at  dusk  to  mysterious'  Uttle  services  which 
are  not  obUgatory, 

In  that  half  hght,  with  only  a  few  candles  on  the 
altar  or  lamps  before  shrines,  one  feels  oneself  cradled 
in  the  unsubstantial  Church,  not  the  stone  and  brick 
which  assert  themselves  by  day,  but  the  shadowy 
spaces  which  they  hollow  out  and  enclose,  the  real 
church  of  the  spirit,  not  of  the  body.  The  people 
who  have  stolen  in  one  by  one,  barely  Ufting  the  leather 
door  curtain,  do  not  take  heed  of  one  another ;  and 
when  each  has  sat  or  knelt  down  among  the  empty 
benches,  he  sees,  in  that  gloom,  only  the  mystic  golden 
blaze  of  the  altar  and  the  vestments.  But  they  feel 
that  they  are  not  alone  :  they  are  side  by  side  with 
unseen  fellow-creatures  stripped  by  this  darkness  of 
aU  vain  work-a-day  personahty,  reduced  to  mere 
similar  souls,  suffering  or  hopeful,  human,  with  a 
common  human  need  for  sympathy  or  consolation ; 
the  human  being  in  its  weakness  and  sadness,  the 
ghosts  that  lurks  in  each  of  us,  but  shrouded  in  the 
majestic  impersonal  forms  of  that  church,  of  its  half- 
visible  aisles  and  arches.    And  even  if  custom  blunt 


Father  Tyrrell  255 


and  leaves  things  scarcely  noticed,  there  must  be  peace 
and  rest  and  refreshment  to  be  brought  back  from 
these  places  ;  the  sense  of  those  other  men  and  women 
unseen,  nameless,  and  almost  shapeless,  who  murmur 
or  chant  the  same  (even  unheard)  words  of  supplica- 
tion or  thanksgiving,  must  leave  the  certainty  that 
there  is,  brooding  like  the  dusky  architecture,  shining 
out  mysteriously  Uke  the  distant  altar,  a  great  Reality 
who  hears  and  answers.  The  visible  church  is,  I  have 
often  felt,  the  shape  of  the  invisible  God.  How  much 
more  must  not  the  prayers  of  these  unseen  fellow- 
worshippers  become  the  assurance  of  that  God's  Usten- 
ing  and  understanding ! 

These  are  feeUngs  in  which,  by  the  power  of  Art 
and  of  whatever  human  sympathy  one  may  possess, 
even  such  an  unbeliever  as  has  never  beheved,  can 
for  a  moment  participate.  What  must  not  be  the 
longing  for  all  this  of  one  who  has  participated  with- 
out suspicion  of  his  own  fancy's  share ;  the  longing 
for  that  certainty  such  as  neither  act  nor  imagination 
brings,  the  certainty  that  this  is  not  the  illusion  of 
the  Creature,  but  the  reaUty  of  the  Divine ;  what 
must  not  be  the  longing  for  the  faith  that  there  is 
Something — Something  inexpressibly  greater  than  all 
longings — at  the  other  end  of  these  human  supplications 
and  actions  of  thanks  ! 

In  the  flash,  the  quiver  of  sympathy,  by  which  we 
glance  into  a  soul's  depths,  as  we  sometimes  glance 


256 


Vital  Lies 


:i 


(1 


1! 


by  a  lightning's  quivering  flash  into  the  veined  and 
opaline  heart  of  a  great  cloud  mass — in  that  transient 
but  unforgettable  comprehension  of  Cathohc  Chris- 
tianity's gifts  to  its  believers,  how  fooUsh  and  grotesque 
becomes  our  surprise  that  Modernists  hke  Father 
Tyrrell  should  not  have  gone  further  ;  how  respectful 
becomes  our  amazement  that  they  should  have  gone 
so  far  from  the  full  unreasoned  acceptance  of  all  these 
things  which  the  poor  human  heart  has  fashioned  for 
its  comfort  during  the  innumerable  ages. 


XXIV 

At  the  bottom  of  Modernism  (and  there  was  a 
Protestant  Modernism  long  before  we  ever  heard  of 
a  CathoUc  one)  is  the  recognition  that  the  power,  the 
human  value,  of  reUgion  is  not  in  its  doctrines.  A 
dogma  is  but  a  pattern  of  words,  conveying  different 
meanings,  or  no  meaning  at  all,  to  those  who  honestly 
accept  it  as  an  emotional  spell  or  a  disciplinary  word 
of  command.  For  emotion  is  directly  communicable, 
because  it  depends  upon  imitation  of  an  attitude,  or 
action,  or  merely  a  gesture.  Moods  and  habits  can 
be  got  secondhand  and  yet  be  genuine  and  eflGlcacious. 
The  antique  mysteries,  with  their  cjnnbal  and  torch, 
bound  their  initiates  in  a  unity  of  feeUng  and  habits 
far  more  real  than  any  community  of  dogma.    Corn- 


Father  Tyrrell  257 


munion  with  other  worshippers  is  probably  a  large 
part  of  the  supposed  union  with  the  divinity,  whether 
that  divinity  be  called  Demeter,  or  Isis,  or  Christ. 
Hence  the  all-importance  of  rites  and  of  words  which, 
having  lost  any  definite  meaning  to  the  intellect,  have 
become  so  many  open  sesames  to  the  emotions.    This 
side  of  reUgion  has  the  further  advantage  of  being 
taught  less  by  the  priest  than  by  the  mother;    its 
essentials  have   been  handed  on   by  the  emotional 
selection   of  kinships   and  surroundings.    The   arch- 
type  of  such  rehgious  influence  are  the  family  rites  of 
Paganism  and  Judaism.    The  speciaUsed  priesthood 
of  Christianity  has  taken  over  some  of  their  potency ; 
but  a  good  deal  may  have  got  lost  in  the  transfer. 
Reading  St  Augustine,  one  has  the  impression  that 
Christianity  must  have  seemed  a  kind  of  Rationalism  ; 
and,  for  all  its  appeal  to  individual  hope  and  fear, 
have  caused  a  wrench,  a  sense  of  emotional  diminu- 
tion, to  the  convert  from  the  old  gods.    And  in  our 
times  the  loss  of  ritual  conmiunion  with  one's  fellow- 
men,  the  loss,  also,  of  the  sacramental  framework  of 
all  human  Ufe,  has  once  more  left  the  days  and  the 
soul  of  man  empty  and  desolate  even  as  the  material 
world  had  become  with  the  death  of  paganism ;    a 
world  shorn  of  divinity,  "  die  entgotterte  Natur  '*  of 
Schiller's  poem. 

The  recognition  of  these  facts  is  as  essential  to 
Modernism  as  its  rejection  of  the  dogmatic  Hteralness 
1r 


n 


258 


Vital  Lies 


1 1 


of  uncritical  ecclesiasticism.  Modernists  like  Father 
Tyrrell  have  learned  from  their  historical  and  philo- 
logical and  pscyhological  studies  not  only  that  dogmas 
will  not  hold  water,  but  also  that  their  real  efficacy  is 
symbohc  and  ritual.  And  in  this  recognition  they 
have  overlooked  that  dogma  is  the  warrant  for  behef, 
and  that  ritual  and  symbol  are,  after  all,  founded 
upon  beUef :  that  vast  and  soaring  cathedral  whose 
arches  and  wall-veils,  and  buttresses  and  pinnacles, 
draw  our  eyes  to  heaven  and  become  themselves  a 
vision  of  a  heavenly  Jerusalem,  is  based,  after  all,  on 
a  substrate  of  alleged  facts  ;  and  if  you  pull  up  fact  after 
fact,  crumble  one  dogma  after  another  into  mere 
symbol,  your  edifice  will  speedily  show  rent  after 
rent,  and  the  day  will  come  when  it  will  strew  the 
ground,  as  the  pinewoods  of  Olympia  are  strewn 
with  the  column-drums  of  the  temple  of  Zeus, 
which  in  its  day  was  one  of  the  seven  wonders  of 
the  world. 

There  are  many  who  think  the  condemnation  of 
Modernism  by  the  present  Pope,  unless  promptly 
withdrawn,  may  sign  the  handing  over  of  CathoUcism 
to  uneducated  classes  and  countries,  and  to  unedu- 
cable  individuals,  its  banishment  to  such  rustic 
"  Hinterlands  "  as  gave  their  names  to  the  last  votaries 
of  what  the  successful  Christian  innovation  called 
Paganism.  And  Father  TyrreU  may  prove  more 
correct  than  he  wished  in  prophesying  that  Chris- 


Father  Tyrrell  259 

tianity  itself  must  perish  unless  it  accepts  scientific 
criticism. 

But  CathoUcism  and  Christianity  have  been  sound 
and  secure,  and  I  would  almost  add,  sincere,  only  in 
times  and  in  souls  which  could  say,  like  Newman 
("  Apologia  "  49),  "  Dogma  has  been  the  fundamental 
principle  of  my  religion.  I  know  no  other  sort  of 
religion.  I  cannot  enter  into  the  idea  of  any  other  sort  of 
religion ;  religion  as  a  mere  sentiment  is  to  me  a  dream 
and  a  mockery. ^^ 

XXV 

These  ideas  which  had  come  to  me  while  reading 
Father  Tyrrell's  "  Christianity  at  the  Cross  Roads," 
have  been  accidentally  confirmed  in  my  mind  in  a  talk 
I  have  lately  had  with  an  extremely  inteUigent  Roman 
priest.  Don  Erasmo — so  I  will  call  him — answers 
the  question  embodied  in  my  last  chapter,  by  remind- 
ing me  that  the  Church  can  perfectly  take  back  all  its 
censure  of  Modernism ;  and,  indeed,  every  other 
thing  it  may  at  any  time  have  said  when  it  once  ceases 
to  hold  water.  Triumphantly  he  points  out  that  the 
Church  fought  successively  against  the  philosophy  of 
St  Thomas,  the  Devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart,  and  I 
know  not  what  else,  which  it  subsequently  incor- 
porated. Newman,  says  Don  Erasmo,  censured  by 
Pius  IX,  was  given  the  cardinal's  hat  by  Leo  XIII ; 


U 


w 


260 


Vital  Lies 


and  Pius  X  has  presented  a  principal  Roman  Church 
(in  the  very  middle  of  the  Corso  !)  to  the  Rosminians 
who  had  been  condemned  by  his  predecessors.  "  For 
the  Church,^^  says  Don  Erasmo  (himself  talking  per- 
haps to-day's  heresy  and  to-morrow's  orthodoxy) 
**  the  Church  is  not  opinion.  It  is  Life,  the  very  spirit 
of  Life,  and  its  vitality  and  adaptability  are  so  mar- 
velUrus  that  one  is  really  forced  to  attribute  them  to  the 
Holy  Ghostr 

[I  can  imagine  some  future  Bergsonian  Don  Erasmo 
identifying  the  third  Person  of  the  Trinity  with  the 
Bergsonian  conception  of  Life,  with  the  Evolution 
CrMrice  itself.] 

But  this  erring  and  repenting  Church,  in  what  is  it 
any  better  than  any  of  us  erring  and  repenting  indi- 
viduals ?  Or  better  than  our  other  institutions  per- 
petually exchanging  an  old  imperfection  for  a  new 
one  ?  What  is  its  Life  ?  Or  rather,  in  this  series  of 
changes,  of  alterations  and  recantations,  what  is  the 
unity  which  does  the  living  ? 

I  refrained  from  putting  this  question.  But  Don 
Erasmo  answered  it  without  my  formulating,  when 
he  went  on  to  tell  me  that  the  fact  of  not  partaking 
in  communion  at  Easter  (he  had  been  lamenting  that 
only  nine  per  cent,  of  the  male  population  of  Milan 
accomplish  this  duty)  constitutes  secession  from 
cathohcism,  because  Catholicism  hinges  not  on  doctrine 
but  on  Sacrament. 


Father  Tyrrell  261 

This  is  the  explanation  (though  Don  Erasmo  is  no 
Modernist)  of  the  attitude  of  Modernism,  and  especi- 
ally, as  I  have  attempted  to  show  in  the  foregoing 
chapters,  of  Father  Tyrrell.  You  may  think  as  differ- 
ently as  you  please  from  your  fellow-Christians, 
indeed  (according  to  Modernism)  it  is  quite  impossible 
for  people  of  different  mentahty  and  culture  to  think 
otherwise  than  differently,  or  to  attach  the  same 
meaning  to  the  same  words ;  but  you  can  feel 
aUke,  and  you  can  act  aUke ;  or  rather  you  can,  by 
your  similar  action,  bear  witness  to  a  presumable 
similarity  of  feeling.  Moreover  [and  although  the 
Modernists  do  not  perhaps  proclaim  it,  this 
is  the  psychological  basis  of  all  their  varyings], 
moreover  you  can  fed  united,  feel  similarity  and 
union,  and  it  is  such  feeling  of  similarity 
and  union  with  past  and  future  generations,  with 
distant  unknown  individuals,  which  is  procured  by 
the  sacraments.  The  sacraments  unite ;  identify 
not  only  with  God,  but  with  all  those  who  partake 
in  them :  they  enlarge  the  single  believer's  sense  of 
living,  they  give  the  feeUng  of  participation  with  the 
whole.  So  long  as  the  Church  possesses  this  focus  of 
emotional  union,  or  more  correctly,  this  focus  for  the 
emotion  of  union,  the  Church  is  herself  a  unity ;  the 
Church  survives,  and  all  her  changes  may  be  regarded 
as  those  of  a  growing  organism. 

This   is,   I   think,   the   Modernist   point   of   view. 


I.i 


H 


262 


Vital  Lies 


What  the  Modernists  fail  to  see,  exactly  because 
themselves  dominated  by  that  very  emotion,  is  that 
once  dogmatic  acquiescence  gone,  the  purely  sub- 
jective matter  of  such  sacramental  union  will  soon 
be  mooted.  And  this  subjective  nature  of  the  sacra- 
mental once  understood,  once  men  have  seen  that 
it  is  they  who  are  making  their  God  for  themselves, 
what  will  become  of  the  unity  of  the  church  and  its 
vitaUty  ?  Or  rather,  what  will  become  of  the  Church 
at  all? 


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THE  LIBRARIES 


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WORKS  BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

HORTUS  VIT^,  Or,  THE  HANGING 
GARDENS 

THE  ENCHANTED  WOODS 

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HAUNTINGS:  FANTASTIC  STORIES 

THE  SENTIMENTAL  TRAVELLER 

POPE  JACYNTH  AND  OTHER  FAN- 
TASTIC  TALES 

GENIUS  LOCI :  NOTES  ON  PLACES 

LIMBO,    AND    OTHER    ESSAYS,    to 


WHICH  IS 

MANTUA 


ADDED       ARIADNE     IN 


LAURUS  NOBILIS:  CHAPTERS  ON 
ART  AND  LIFE 

RENAISSANCE,  FANCIES  AND 
STUDIES 

THE  COUNTESS  OF  ALBANY 

ALTHEA:  DIALOGUES  ON  ASPIRA- 
TIONS AND  DUTIES 

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ing A  FRIVOLOUS  CONVERSA- 
TION 

BEAUTY  AND  UGLINESS 


I- 

! 

'i 

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\ 


VITAL  LIES 

STUDIES  OF  SOME 
VARIETIES  OF  RECENT 
OBSCURANTISM    »  »    © 


BY 


VERNON  LEE 


VOL.  II 


LONDON:   JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY   HEAD 
NEW    YORK:    JOHN   LANE    COMPANY 


TORONTO:     9fiL^*«S&  C0CJCD|3EN 


MCMXII 


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I  ^■•wan—  !■  !■■■  I  1  >—  IM  !■  !■  JM  fm^  fm 


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How  then  may  we  devise  one  of  those  falsehoods  in 
the  hour  of  need,  I  said,  which  we  lately  spoke  of — ^just 
one  royal  lie  [yevvatov  ti  iv  rj/evdofiiyovi]  which  may 
deceive  the  rulers,  if  that  be  possible,  and  at  any  rate 
the  rest  of  the  city  ? 

Plato,  Republic ^  iii.  414 

(Jowett's  Translation). 


Relling.  I'm  fostering  the  vital  lie  in  him. 
Gregtrs.  Vital  lie  ?    Is  that  what  you  said  ? 
Relling.  Yes — I  said  vital  lie — for  illusion,  you  know, 
is  the  stimulating  principle. 

Ibsen,  The  Wild  Duck. 


1^  \  Vl 


1. 


•  •  •  • ,  •  • 


•  •   •  ••  •  • 

» •  •  •  •    •  • 


*   •  •  • 

••      a • •         • 


.Tnr/ijffill  ^  Sieorii^Print&rSf  Edinburgh 

•  •    •/••<       «     ••    »••••    ♦ 

•  •    •••••«••      •     ••    •    •• 


•     •  ,• •     •      .• '   «• 
•  •«•    ••     »•• 


•  • 

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•  •  t  • 


PART  II  .  X 
APPLIED   OBSCURANTISM 

{continued) 


"On  pragmatic  principles,  if  the  hypothesis  of  Ood  vxrrhs  satis- 
factorily in  the  widest  sense  of  the  toord,  it  is  true.  Now,  whatever 
its  residual  difficulties  may  be,  experience  shows  that  it  certainly  does 
work  and  that  the  problem  is  ...  to  determine  it  so  that  it  will  com- 
bine  unth  aU  the  other  working  truths." — W.  James,  "  Pragmatism," 
p.  299. 

"  There  is  sound  human  nature  behind  the  instinct,  as  we  may 
properly  call  it,  which  leads  men  to  distrust  an  '  atheist.* " — Crawley, 
"  Tree  of  Life,"  p.  296. 


CHAPTER  II 

ANTHROPOLOGICAL  APOLO- 
GETICS AND  THE  WILL  TD 
MAKE    OTHERS    BELIEVE  ^ 


FROM  the  Will  to  believe  we  pass  on  to  the  Will 
to  make  others  believe. 
Modernism,  represented  by  Father  Tyrrell's 
very  beautiful  posthumous  book,  has  afforded  me  an 
example  of  how  statements  admittedly  false  in  the 
usual  sense  of  that  word,  may  be  accepted  as  true  in  the 
sense  of  truly  adapted  to  certain  spiritual  demands. 
It  is  in  the  books  of  an  anthropologist,  of  all  improbable 
people,  that  I  have  found  the  expUcit  theory,  no  longer 
that  opinions  may  be  true  because  they  are  desirable, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  that  opinions  which  are  false 
have  been  and  should  continue  to  be  fostered  because 
of  their  usefulness. 

Mr  Ernest  Crawley  is  not  himself  a  believer,  or  at 

1  Emest  Crawley,  "  The  Tree  of  Life,  a  Study  of  Religion."  1905. 
Same  author,  "  The  Mystic  Rose  :  a  Study  of  Primitive  Marriage." 
1902. 


Vital  Lies 


least,  he  does  not  proceed  as  if  he  were  one ;   for  the 
critical  chapters  of  Father  Tyrrell's  "  Christianity  at  the 
Cross  Roads  "  make  one  cautious  in  the  presence  of  the 
amazing  apparent  openness  of  minds  which  reveal 
themselves  afterwards  as  quite  amazingly  made  up. 
Be  this  as  it  may,  even  as  Father  Tyrrell  begins  by  a 
thorough  critical  demoUtion  of  the  CathoUcism  which 
he  intends  to  rebuild,  so  Mr  Crawley  sets  out  with  a 
half  volume  destructive  of  the  official,  .the  usual,  claims 
of  Christianity  in  particular  and  of  supematuraUsm  in 
general.      A   Priest-Eater,   according   to    the   ItaHan 
phrase,  could  do  no  better  than  to  carry  about  and  if 
possible  get  by  heart  those  chapters  of  "  The  Tree  of 
Life  "  which  deal  with  the  historical  genuineness  of  the 
Christian  Myth.     If  toleration  had  not  taught  agnostics 
a  certain  perhaps  prudish  respectfuhiess,  what  a  store- 
house of  Voltairian  jests  those  chapters  would  be ! 

And  now  I  come  to  think  of  it,  are  we  latter-day 
rationahsts  so  absolutely  right  in  behaving  as  if  we 
really  respected  every  "honest  rehgious  opinion"? 
Should  we  be  less  serious  if  we  honestly  laughed  at 
the  ideas  of  our  adversaries?  And  are  not  certain 
ideas  grotesque,  or  merely  dehghtfully,  childishly  funny 
when  held  or  taught  nowadays,  which  may  have 
been  venerable  and  tremendous  in  their  original  intel- 
lectual surroundings  ?  Why  should  I  have  restrained 
dehghted  laughter  at  the  sight  of  a  certain  Madonna's 
complete  trousseau,  handkerchiefs,  garters  and  all,  and 


Anthropological  Apologetics  5 

copied  the  embarrassed  silence  of  the  CathoUc  friends 
who  accompanied  me,  merely  because  of  our  modem 
theory  that  one  must  respect  every  sincere  belief  and 
accept  every  insincere  one  as  if  one  did  not  recognise 
its  insincerity?  But  I  have  not  the  courage  of  my 
opinions  on  this  subject  of  respectfulness,  and  indeed 
I  am  not  quite  sure  what  my  opinions  are,  nor  is  this 
the  place  to  go  into  them. 

This  parenthesis  is  really  connected  with  the  subject 
in  hand,  since  it  is  such  books  as  Mr  Crawley's  which 
have  taught  us  some  of  that  respectful  attitude  towards 
behefs,  sometimes  poetic  and  charming,  but  oftener 
also  foolish  and  disgusting,  as  the  ideas  and  habits  of 
barbarous  people  are  Hkely  to  be ;  since  it  takes  a 
stomach  fortified  by  much  science  not  to  be  sickened 
by  the  contents  of  anthropologists'  dredging-nets,  as 
they  are  pulled  up  out  of  the  fertile  primaeval  filth  of 
nonsense  which  was  once  wisdom,  and  obscenity  which 
was  once  morals. 

For  after  the  chapters  on  the  historical  evidence  of 
Christianity,  or  rather  historical  evidence  against 
Christianity,  come  the  chapters  in  the  style  of  Frazer's 
*'  Golden  Bough,"  on  the  prehistoric  origins  of  religions 
in  general,  as  deduced  from  the  comparative  study  of 
obsolete  mythologies  and  of  what  travellers  can  tell  us  of 
the  ideas  and  habits  of  existing  savages.  The  anthropo- 
logical chapters  of  "  The  Tree  of  Life,"  like  the  whole 
of  Mr  Crawley's  more  purely  anthropological  volume. 


Vital  Lies 


"  The  Mystic  Rose,"  are  minute  studies  of  the  concatena- 
tions of  ideas,  the  frequently  faulty  concatenations  of 
absurd  ideas,  out  of  which,  according  to  Mr  Crawley, 
have  arisen  practices  and  standards,  not  only  restric- 
tions and  sanctions,  purifications  and  atonements  (the 
whole  comphcated  and  often  self-contradictory  system 
of  taboos  and  sacrifices),  but  also  actual  religious 
opinions  to  which  Mr  Crawley  traces  the  origin  of 
dogmas  like  that  of  Original  Sin  and  even  of  the 
Trinity. 

All  this  amounts  to  saying  that  the  religious  doctrines 
and  observances  still  taught  in  our  days,  do  not  answer 
to  the  origin  assigned  as  a  reason  for  their  acceptance. 
The  inspiration  of  Scripture,  the  tradition  of  the  Church, 
the  Teaching  of  Christ,  the  Commandments  of  Jehovah, 
are  mere  fallacies  and  falsehoods,  bolstering  up  other 
fallacies  and  falsehoods,  as  the  false  Decretals 
bolstered  up  the  false  donation  of  Constantino.  The 
"  Truths  of  ReHgion  "  are  reduced  to  so  much  myth- 
ology, mistaken  scientific  hypotheses,  and  futile 
practical  regulations  of  primaeval  savagery,  rendered 
still  more  mistaken  and  futile  by  successive  interpre- 
tations, emendations,  and  interpolations  without  end. 

With  Mr  Crawley  as  our  Virgil  we  descend  Dante-like 
through  layer  after  layer,  depths  within  depths,  of 
superstitions  we  can  scarcely  conceive,  and  practices 
we  dare  scarcely  describe ;  and  at  the  bottom  of 
that  pit  we  find   ourselves  in  the   presence  of  .  .  . 


(! 


Anthropological  Apologetics  7 

well,  let  us  say,  of  that  mystic  musical  instrument, 
which  consecrates  and  fertilises  and  exorcises :  the 
Bull-Roarer.  This  is  the  very  reason,  according  to 
Mr  Crawley,  for  continuing  to  teach  the  doctrines  of 
rehgion,  for  conforming  to  its  customs  and  endowing  its 
ministers ;  the  only  one,  above  all,  against  disestab- 
lishing the  Church  of  England. 

Thus  crudely  stated,  the  thesis  of  Mr  Crawley  sounds 
too  grotesque  to  be  taken  in  consideration.  But  taken 
— I  will  not  say  critically  examined — in  detail,  it 
embodies,  however  questionably,  a  large  amount  of 
unquestionable  fact,  both  psychological  and  sociological, 
and  sets  forth,  however  sophistically,  an  even  larger 
amount  of  suggestive  hypothesis.  It  constitutes,  in 
short,  one  of  the  finest  achievements  of  the  "  Will- 
to-beUeve." 


n 


And  now  let  us  return  to  the  Bull  Roarer,  which  may 
be  taken  as  a  convenient  symbol  (the  volume  should 
have  been  called  after  it,  not  after  the  Cross)  of  the 
functions  attributed  by  Mr  Crawley  to  Rehgion.  For 
the  Bull  Roarer  consecrates  and  purifies,  makes  things 
lawful  and  unlawful ;  it  awakens  fear,  and  "  there  is  an 
explicit  connection  between  the  Churinga  (or  sacred  Bull 
Roarer)  and  the  transmission  of  physical  life  in  the 
Australian  philosophy :   the  application  of  a  Churinga 


8 


Vital  Lies 


is  supposed  to  cause  conception.^*  In  short,  the  Bull 
Roarer  presides  over  primitive  man's  version  of  what 
Mr  Crawley  usually  alludes  to  as  the  Elemental  View 
of  Life. 

And  first  of  all :  please  do  not  confuse  elemental  with 
elementary ;  for  nothing  can  be  less  elementary  than  this 
view  of  hfe,  as  will  appear  from  my  difficulty  in  doing 
what  Mr  Crawley  never  attempts,  namely,  defining  it 
in  a  few  words. 

We  may  make  a  first  shot  at  what  Mr  Crawley  is 
talking  about,  by  saying  that  the  Elemental  View  of 
Life  is  concerned  with,  or  arises  from  (both  in  fact)  the 
consideration  of  what  may  be  called  the  elements  of 
human  life,  individual  and  social,  to  wit,  births,  deaths 
and  marriages.    And  one  meaning  of  Elemental  View 
of  Life—ioT  instance,  when  Mr  Crawley  is  speaking  of 
the  Elemental  View  of  Life  of  primitive  peoples— is  the 
view  concerned  with  the  dangers,  real  and  imaginary, 
connected  with  these  elements  of  human  existence,  and 
hence  with  the  rules  and  proceedings,  taboos,  exor- 
cisms, purifications,  expiations,  prohibitions,  which  are 
supposed  to  diminish  the  dangers  besetting  man's  hfe 
throughout,  but  most  particularly  at  its  most  critical 
acts,  points,  and  stages,  namely,  as  ab-eady  said,  births, 
deaths,  and  marriages.^ 

*  P.  264  et  aeq.  ;  "  But  every  man,  when  he  happens  to  be  brought 
down  face  to  face  with  the  elemental  realities  of  existence,  birth  and 
death,  hunger  and  thirst,  ipso  facto  becomes  a  religious  subject.'* 


Anthropological  Apologetics  9 

Dangers  besetting  Hfe  !    Two-thirds  of  Mr  Crawley's 
anthropological  work,  both  in  this  volume  and  in  "  The 
Mystic  Rose,"  are  intended  to  bring  home  to  us  the  way 
in  which  primitive  man  is  hagridden  by  the  notion  of 
danger  lurking  in  every  object  and  attending  every  act. 
Now  we  civilised  persons  also  know  that  our  hfe,  our 
comfort,  our  fortune,  are  at  the  mercy  of  a  hundred 
contingencies.     But  we  have  learned  to  think  of  sick- 
ness,   droughts   and  draughts,   storms,   accidents,   as 
concatenations  of  outer  circumstances  which,  even  if 
we  cannot  forestall,  we  can  in  most  cases  understand. 
Primitive  Man,  on  the  contrary,  has  not.     What  he 
thinks  most  about  are  his  own  desires  and  habits ; 
these  alone  are  connected  in  his  experience  ;    all  other 
facts  are  scattered,  ragged  and  ragbaggy,  taking  what 
order   they   get   from   intermittent   connection   with 
himself.    The  object  of  primitive  thought  is  barely 
considered  apart  from  the  needs  and  customs  of  the 
subject ;    and  when  this  object  assumes  some  sort  of 
independent  existence  this  objective  existence  is  but 
a  copy  of  that  of  the  subject.^    In  other  words,  thinking 
little,  he  thinks  in  confused  personal  terms  and  associ- 
ates all  that  happens  with  a  will,  with  passions  and 
habits  like  his  own.     The  malignity  inherent  in  things 
is  for  him  a  Hteral  reahty ;    evils  are  evil-ones ;   and 
whereas  evils  may  be  prevented,  evil  ones  must  be 

*  Cf.  L6vy-Bruhl'8  "  Les  Fonctions  Mentales  dans   les  Soci6t& 
Infdrieures."     1910. 


^i.„:-J™^.a3Mi 


II 


; 


; 


lO 


Vital  Lies 


appeased.  The  Will,  which  Primitive  Man  imagines 
inherent  in  all,  things,  is  a  personal  will,  and  it  is  met 
by  personal  feeUngs :  not  only  fear,  but  hope,  and 
most  of  all,  respect  as  towards  another  more  powerful 
and  utterly  mysterious  self ;  mysterious  because  the 
personaUty  is,  after  all,  in  things,  not  in  men ;  mysterious 
because  undefined,  baflling,  uninteUigible  ;  mysterious 
above  all,  because  this  which  is  human  and  yet  not 
human,  this  monster-personality  compounded,  chimera- 
like, of  incongruous  beings  and  objects — man-animal 
but  also  man-stone,  man-flame,  man-plant,  man- 
sickness  or  man-storm — expresses  its  will  not  in  definite 
words  but  in  the  inarticulate  and  enigmatic  language 
of  benefits  and  injuries.  This  being  the  case.  Primitive 
Man's  unceasing  efforts  to  circumvent  the  evil  possi- 
bihties  besetting  life  begets  what  is  more  important 
even  than  any  system  of  sanctions  and  prohibitions, 
namely  the  habit  of  propitiation  of  one  knows  not 
what ;  the  tendency  to  conform  and  obey,  only  the 
more  that  one  is  not  sure  why  one  conforms  or  what 
one  obeys  ;  the  habit  of  bowing  to  an  imperative  whose 
origins  cannot  be  traced,  and  whose  nature  it  is  far 
better  to  leave  unquestioned. 

This  particidar  religious  habit  of  obedience  to  the 
mysterious,  is,  I  believe,  another  element,  if  I  may  use 
the  word,  of  what  Mr  Crawley  means  by  the  elemental 
in  human  life ;  elemental  because,  being  automatic, 
it  is  treated  as  instinctive,  and  being  unreasoning,  it 


Anthropological  Apologetics  1 1 

is  treated  as  unconscious  ;  in  short,  elemental,  because 
you  cannot  see  your  way  beyond.^ 

Now  this  attitude  of  obedience  to  a  mysterious  will 
is,  I  need  scarcely  remark,  of  very  great  advantage  to 
Primitive  Man  ;  the  famiUes  and  races  which  it  welds 
together  are  hkely  to  survive  by  the  possession  proxi- 
mately of  unity  of  purpose,  and  ultimately  of  self- 
control  in  their  single  members ;  and  the  survival  of 
those  who  possess  these  advantages  means  the  survival 
and  increase  of  the  advantageous  group  of  habits.  ^ 
Racial  selection  will  have  confirmed  this  obscure 
element  of  racial  existence  ;  and  what  we  call  selection 
being  automatic,  unreasoning,  and  such  that  we  think 
of  it  in  company  with  the  "  Forces  of  the  Universe  " 
is  itself  surely  something  elemental — at  least  I  think 
its  operation  goes  to  increase  that  Elemental  character 
which  Mr  Crawley  speaks  about  with  all  due  elemental 
darkness. 

And  here  I  would  open  a  parenthesis  :  It  is  curious 
how  easily,  in  talking  about  things  which  are  difficult 

J  "  The  Tree  of  Life,"  p.  260.  .  .  .  "  In  dose  connexion  tvith  the 
elemental  limit  of  religion  is  the  fact  that  its  action  generally  takes  jila^e 
in  the  mysterious  twilight  of  svh-consciousness.  This  is  one  reason  why 
man  is  so  slow  to  realize,  so  chary  of  discussing  and  so  tenacious  in 
holding  what  is  to  him  a  sacred  possession.  The  impulse  itself,  which 
makes  us  regard  a  tiling  as  sacred  is  a  radiation  from  the  rdigiout 
impulse." 

•  "  The  Tree  of  Life,"  p.  332.  "  The  wear  and  tear  of  evolution 
has,  so  to  say,  brought  the  necessary  elements  into  their  proper  places 
by  a  natural  process  the  motive  forces  of  which  we  have  attempted  to 
describe.  .  .  ." 


^ 


12 


Vital  Lies 


i  i 


to  understand  and  difficult  to  express,  one  developes 
a  certain  imaginative,   almost  aesthetic,  complacency 
towards  confusion  and  obscurity  ;  and  how  an  instinct 
—shall   we   say   an   elemental  instinct  ?— arises,    ad- 
monishing us  in  vague  and  irrefutable  words  or  no 
words— that  where  we  do  not  understand  there  must 
be  many  greater  and  finer  things  than  where  we  do 
understand;  a  feeUng  akin  to  that  of  the  subhme, 
as  of  finding  oneself  in  a  huge  building  dimly  Hghted  ; 
a  feeling  which  has  doubtless  had  its  racial  advan- 
tages in  making  us  patient  with  the  stiU  mysterious, 
and    impatient    with    perfunctory    explanations.     In 
this  sense  it  seems  to  me  that  Mr  Crawley's  concep- 
tion of  rehgion  as  a  function  of  the  "  Elemental  Life  " 
or  of  the  "  Elemental  View  of  Life  "  is  reinforced  by 
a   Bergsonian   Vitahsm  identifying  Life   with    some 
kind  of  intuitive  will,  and  a  knowledge  of  reality  with 
instinct   as   opposed   to   reason.     In   some   confused 
fashion— and  we  have  no  right  to  ask  for  clearness 
(and  still  less   chance   of  getting  it)  in  deahng  with 
such    subjects    and    such    philosophers— the    original 
anthropomorphism  of  primitive  man  is  justified  in  Mr 
Crawley's  eyes  (if  one  may  talk  of  eyes  where  all  is 
dark)  by  coincidence  with  a  philosophical  anthropo- 
morphism to  which  the  evolution  of  the  race  is  itself 
the  manifestation  of  a  mystic  racial  will;    the  Bull 
Roarer  is  not  only  venerable  for  what  it  symbolised 
to  our  remote  forefathers  and  our  remoter  savage 


6 
11 

4 


Anthropological  Apologetics  13 

cousins;  it  becomes  sacred,  or  at  least  semi-sacred 
as  the  possible  symbol  of  some  dim  philosophic  creed 
of  this  very  modem  philosopher. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  no  supposition  of  mine,  but 
clearly  expressed  fact,  that  there  is  another  important 
side  to  Mr  Crawley's  notion  of  the  part  played  by  the 
religious  behefs  and  attitudes  of  Primitive  Man.  As 
there  was  "an  explicit  connection  between  the  Chur- 
inga  (or  Sacred  Bull  Roarer)  and  the  transmission  of 
physical  Life,''  so  there  is  an  explicit  connection,  in 
Mr  Crawley's  theory,  "between  the  religious  and  the 
sexual  impulses,  and  even  in  the  normal  subject  there 
must  be  poirUs  of  contact  between  the  two  dominant  ex- 
pressions of  vital  forcer  Basing  himself  upon  the 
evidence  of  primitive  mythology  and  ritual,  and 
adopting  rather  hastily  the  hypothesis  of  certain 
schools  of  psychology  and  psychopathy,  Mr  Crawley 
mforms  us  that  "  the  religious  emotion  springs  from  the 
same  source  as  the  sexual "  i  and  thence  infers  "  that 

1  Mr  Crawley  has  considerably  distorted  the  evidence  of  Mr 
Starbuck's  valuable  "Psychology  of  Religion;"  for  Mr  Starbuck 
considers  religious  exaltation  not  as  a  consequence,  but  as  a  oc 
tocident  accompaniment,  of  puberty.  In  the  foUowing  passage  Mr 
Urawley  mcorporates  another  of  Mr  Starbuck's  views.  I  would 
pohit  out  that  Mr  Crawley's  whole  thesis  is  never  clearly  organised, 
but  diffluent,  putting  ideas  in  contact  rather  than  in  connection. 
It  w  at  puberty  (hat  origimdity  begins  .  .  ,  and  if  mental  develop, 
ment  chiefly  depends  on  diverting  the  sexual,  or  rather  the  physicaUy 
vital  impulse  into  other  channels,  then  we  may  infer  that  the  deferring 
both  natural  and  artificial  of  the  sexual  life  is  one  of  the  chief  factors 
of  progress.    In  this  matter  religion  has  played  an  important  part." 


~-~WS!t 


H 


Vital  Lies 


by  preserving  sexual  integrity  and  by  consecrating  this 
secondary  source  of  life,  religion  performs  a  service  on 
which  the  vitality  of  the  race  depends,^  adding  in  support 
of  his  theory  that  "  there  is  a  curious  analogy  to  be 
found  in  what  may  be  called  the  shyness  of  religion.  Tfie 
resentment  shown  by  religious  persons  when  their  deepest 
convictions  are  doubted  or  attacked,  is  an  instinctive 
recoil  from  danger  threatening  the  sources  of  being." 

Religion  in  this  sense  of  "  beir^g  sprung  from  the  same 
source  as  sexual  emotion  "  and  of  "  preserving  sexual 
integrity,"  appears  to  Mr  Crawley  as  more  than  ever  ' 
Elemental  and  Vital.  And  this  is  why  the  demonstra- 
tion of  the  anthropological,  nay,  physiological,  origins 
of  religious  beUefs  is,  in  the  eyes  of  Mr  Crawley,  not 
an  attack  but  a  defence  of  reUgion,  the  very  finest 
defence  that  can  possibly  be  made,  since  it  vahdates 
reUgion's  claims  by  the  very  facts  which  have  hitherto 
been  set  forth  to  discredit  and  disgrace  them.  Vol- 
taire himself,  re-incamated  in  Anatole  France,  would 
be  flouted  by  anthropology  in  the  person  of  Mr  Crawley ; 
for  could  not  Mr  Crawley  cap  every  absurdity  and 
indecency  with  a  greater  one  ?  and  has  not  Mr  Crawley 
appropriated  to  the  service  of  reUgious  orthodoxy, 
that  most  grotesque  and  venerable  of  instruments  of 
music,  the  Bull  Roarer  ? 

Now  I  want  to  say  at  once  that,  so  far  as  an  igno- 
ramus can  say  so,  I  think  Mr  Crawley  is  probably 
quite  right,  and  that,  in  a  way,  Voltaire,  with  his  jests 


Anthropological  Apologetics  15 

about  Nebuchadnezzar,  the  witch  of  Endor,  and  those 
sacred  onions  of  Egypt,  "  qui  n'etoient  pas  tout  a  fait 
des  Dieux,  mais  leur  ressembloient  beaucoup,"  was 
quite  wrong.  Many  of  these  behefs  and  rites,  which 
appear  to  us  ridiculous,  obscene,  or  ferocious,  may 
have  been  at  the  time  of  their  origin,  respectable 
scientific  hypotheses  and  moral  and  humanitarian 
practices.  Moreover,  they  were  not  only  useful  in 
keeping  our  savage  ancestors  aUve,  and  inducing  them 
indirectly  to  beget  and  to  nurture  us,  but  they 
were  even  more  useful  in  fostering  certain  standards 
and  commandments,  and  more  useful  even  than  that 
in  securing  mental  attitudes  of  reverence,  of  obedi- 
ence, of  conservatism:  in  fact,  being  part  of  the 
Elemental  Life  (as  well  as  of  the  elementary),  they 
were  useful  in  producing  Elemental  Views  of  Life. 

In  short,  so  long  as  Mr  Crawley  wishes  us  to  be  grate- 
ful for  some  of  the  extraordinary  misconceptions  of 
Primitive  Man,  I  am,  so  to  speak,  quite  ready  for  a 
sort  of  posthumous  and  platonic  enshrining  of  the 
Bull  Roarer.  In  fact,  I  am  more  willing  than  Mr 
Crawley  himself ;  for  I  do  not  mind  saying  that  a  respect 
for  truth  and,  indeed,  for  morahty  of  any  kind,  is  a 
purely  human  requirement,  and  does  not  seem  to  have 
presided  over  the  proceedings  of  the  Forces  which 
fashioned  the  Universe,  or  the  Gods  which  made  Man, 
thank  heaven,  in  an  image  which  was  not  their  own. 
So  that  when  I  was  told,  quite  casually,  that  a  rude 


■^ 


i6 


Vital  Lies 


i ', 


musical  instrument,  still  used  for  calling  the  faithful 
during  the  Passion-days-silence  of  the  Bells,  was  in 
reahty  the  Bull  Roarer,  I  felt  I  should  Uke  to  visit  the 
church  where  it  was,  and  bum  a  grain  of  incense  in 
its  honour. 


Ill 


But  how  about  Real  Believers  ?  How  about  those 
who  still  kneel  like  children  at  the  knee  of  God,  looking 
with  unquestioning  faith  into  the  eyes  of  the  Father  ? 
Those  whose  passionate  longing  for  the  sacraments 
is  checked  by  their  passionate  reverence,  those  for 
whom  the  drops  from  the  chaHce,  the  wafer  between 
their  unclosed  Hps  restore  and  refresh  the  soul  as  no 
earthly  food  or  wine  ever  comforted  and  strengthened 
their  body  ?  How  about  those  for  whom  the  cosmos 
is  held  together  by  moral  forces,  for  whom  the  heavens 
still  tell  the  glory  of  God,  and  for  whom,  even  as  for 
Dante,  the  soul  of  man  in  moved  by  the  same  Love 
which  moves  the  sun  and  stars — "  L'amor  che  muove 
11  Sole  e  I'altre  stelle  ?  "  I  have  a  right  to  speak  of 
them,  because,  in  these  days  of  Will-to-BeUeve,  of 
dogmas  interpreted  to  mean  something  else,  of  faith 
justified  and  recommended  for  its  moral  or  social 
utihty,  it  has  been  given  to  me  to  behold,  even  if  only 
through  a  glass  and  dimly,  the  loveUness  and  glory  of 
souls    which  really  beheved :    beheved    as    a    child. 


Anthropological  Apologetics  17 

because  they  were  and  could  be  no  other  than  ex- 
quisite children,  with  a  good  child's  absolute  trust 
in  the  words  of  those  that  it  loves. 

What  of  them  ?  The  bare  idea  revolts  me,  and  yet 
I  feel  bound  to  bring  them  in,  and  ask  what  would 
they  think  of  such  passages  as  these,  which  I  cull  from 
Mr  Crawley's  "  Tree  of  Life.'" 

P.  261,  et  seq. — "  The  analogies  from  savage  culture 
show  that  religion  is  a  direct  outcome  of  elemental  human 
ruUure,  and  that  this  elemental  human  nature  remains 
practically  unchanged.  .  .  .  If  a  savage  eats  the  flesh 
of  a  strong  man  or  divine  person,  and  a  modern  Christian 
partakes  sacramentally  of  Christ's  body  and  blood  under 
the  forms  of  bread  and  wine,  there  is  evidently  a  human 
need  behind  both  acts  which  prompts  them  and  is  respon- 
sible for  their  similarity. '^ 
And  then  : 

P.    224. — "  Anthropologists  seem  to  be  agreed  that 
the  primitive  conception  of  the  force  which  underlies 
tabooed  persons  and  whieh  we  here  identify  with  the 
sacred  essences  of  life,  is  an  undifferentiated  idea  ;  that, 
while  we  should  call  some  of  the  persons  and  things  to 
which   '  sacredness'   attaches  holy,  and  other  unclean, 
early  man  made  no  such  distinction.     The  uncleanness, 
for  example,  of  girls  at  puberty  and  the  sanctity  of  holy 
mm  do  not,  to  the  primitive  mind,  differ  from  each  other.'' 
"  Many  a  term,  translated  '  unclean  '  in  the  Bible,  is 
to  be  interpreted  in  this  way." 
2b 


)i 


i8 


Vital  Lies 


i  V 


Again  : 

*'  Payne  .  .  .  has  suggestedy  on  philological  grounds, 
that  the  distinction  hetvoeen  good  and  had  first  arose  in 
connection  with  food.  The  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness  is  more  than  a  metaphor"  ^ 

Or  this  : 

P.  264. — "  It  seems  at  first  paradoxical  that,  our 
highest  imaginings  should  he  rooted  deep  in  our  animal 
nature,  hut  the  conclusion  hecomes  a  truism  as  soon  as  it 
is  formulated.  .  .  . 

**  Women  are,  in  the  general  sense,  more  religious  than 
men.  Their  life  is  kept  hy  organic  peculiarities  nearer 
to  the  primitive." 

Or  this  passage  about  the  origin  of  the  conception 
of  the  Deity : 

P.  253. — "  But  he  (God)  uxis  neither  a  spirit  nor  an 
abstraction,  hut  a  superhuman  man  .  .  .  man  heing  the 
chief  or  only  "  Maker  "  knovm  to  man.  In  early  thought, 
therefore,  God  is  not  nature  personified  .  .  ,  to  the 
savage,  '  spirit '  mmns  something  hoth  more  and 
less  than  it  mear^  to  us.  The  same  is  true  of 
'  God  * — tJie  term  in  early  language  is  more  of  an 
adjective  than  a  noun.  The  idea  of  God  is  complex, 
the  sorcerer,  as  an  '  embryo-God '  has  a  share  in  its 
formation." 

*  Mr  Crawley  has  started  with  a  quotation  from  Starbuck  that 
"Physiological  hunger  widens  its  appropriateness  .  .  .  hungering 
after  righteousness  is  an  irradiation  of  the  crude  instinct  of  Food- 
getting." 


Anthropological  Apologetics  19 

Or  this  one,  with  its  Bergsonian  and  biological 
treatment  of  that  immortal  essence,  the  soul : 

P.  237. — **  First  of  all  we  must  note  a  common  fallacy 
of  the  animistic  theory  of  religion,  namely,  that  it  is  the 
soul  which  gives  life.  The  truth  is  that  the  life  is  the 
soul." 

Or  these  quotations  bearing  on  the  relations  of 
Religion  and  Ethics : 

P.  266. — **  Religion  affirms  not  morality  nor  altruism, 
hut  health  and  strength  of  hody  and  character,  physical 
and  moral  cleanliness  and  decency,  deference  to  age, 
experience,  and  position,  principles  which  are  hound  up 
V)ith  the  elemental  view  of  life." 

P.  273. — " .  .  .  If  ever  a  conviction  seemed  to  he 
mortized  in  adamant  it  is  perhaps  the  helief  that  religion 
is  essentially  altruistic.  But  the  facts  unmistakeahly 
point  to  the  exact  opposite.  The  most  powerful  instinct 
in  hurrmn  nature  could  hardly  he  expected  k  priori  to 
show  in  its  second  stage  such  a  reversal  of  type." 

P.  277. — "  The  lesson  of  religious  cruelty,  like  the 
lesson  of  martyrdom,  is  that  if  religion,  the  permanent 
expression  of  vitality,  can  show  such  invincible  strength 
of  cruelty  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  endurance  on  the  other, 
the  fact  is  due  to  an  increase  of  vitality." 

Above  all,  what  would  Real  BeUevers  say  to  the 
chapters  in  which  Mr  Crawley  expounds  all  the  con- 
verging though  sometimes  conflicting  facts  and  hypo- 
theses against  the  divine  origin  of   the  faith  which 


)! 


20 


Vital  Lies 


0 


i 


\^ 


they  hold  ?  "  We  must  not  unduly  emphasize  this 
point  of  vieWy''  as  Mr  Crawley  concludes  after  quoting 
anthropological  authorities  in  favour  of  a  primitive 
identification  of  **  holiness  "  and  "  uncleanness,"  and 
of  "  sacred  "  with  "  dangerous." 

Decidedly  not.  And  least  of  all  with  Real  BeUevers. 
A  generation  ago  they  would  have  ceased  to  call  on  us  ; 
in  1842  they  would  have  imprisoned  us  like  Holyoake  ; 
in  1812  pilloried  us  like  the  bookseller  Eaton  ;  ^  and  a 
couple  of  centuries  earher,  they  would  have  burnt  us 
like  Servetus  or  Bruno.  Nowadays  they  would  only 
be  inexpressibly  surprised  and  hurt.  And,  para- 
doxical though  it  sound,  one  would  not  hurt  with  one's 
opinions  these  self-same  people  who,  if  we  had  not  got 
the  upper  hand,  would  have  hurt  us  very  zealously 
ad  majorem  Dei  gloriam. 

But  they  will  not  read  Mr  Crawley's  book  nor  mine. 
And  Mr  Crawley's  book  is  not  intended  for  them. 

For  are  not  such  Real  Behevers  themselves  the 
perfect  product  of  that  gradually  developing  elemental 

^  In  1812,  Eaton,  a  bookseller,  was  prosecuted  for  selling  the  "  Age 
of  Reason,"  and  sentenced  by  Lord  Ellenborough  to  be  imprisoned 
for  eighteen  months,  and  to  stand  for  an  hour  in  the  pillory 
("  Modem  England,"  by  A.  W.  Benn,  vol.  i.  p.  123).  In  August, 
1842,  G.  J.  Holyoake  was  condemned  to  six  months'  imprisonment 
in  Gloucester  Gaol  for  declaring  disbelief  in  God's  existence  and 
saying  "  tn  the  present  state  of  distress  the  people  were  too  poor  to  have 
a  Ood"  and  that  as  a  measure  of  economy  the  lecturer  (H.)  would 
"  put  the  Deity  on  half-pay"  meaning  that  he  would  devote  half 
the  revenue  of  the  Church  to  secular  purposes  (A.  W.  Benn, 
"  English  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  vol.  i.  p.  405). 


? 


Anthropological  Apologetics  21 

view  of  life,  with  all  its  incomparable  efficacy  of  mis- 
understanding and  mystery,  its  safe  subconscious 
vital  egoism,  its  roots  in  the  instinct  of  physical  pro- 
pagation ;  in  fact,  are  they  not  religious  because  they 
can  never  understand  the  true  functions  of  rehgion  ? 


IV 

I  think  that  this  is  the  distinctly  expressed,  rational- 
istic and  indehcate  core  of  what  Mr  Crawley  would 
suggest  in  terms  leaving  more  to  the  imagination  and 
the  sentiment  of  his  Reader.  The  book  is  evidently 
written  for  other  kinds  of — I  scarcely  know  whether 
BeUevers  or  UnbeUevers.  However,  before  accom- 
panying Mr  Crawley  to  his  real  audience,  I  want  to 
make  quite  sure — or  rather  I  want  to  stir  about  in 
my  thoughts — whether  the  Real  BeUevers  are  really 
so  completely  dominated  by  the  subconscious  elemental 
view  of  Ufe  as  we  are  apt  to  take  for  granted. 

The  Real  BeUever  beUeves  that  he  ought  to  beUeve. 
This  ought  to  believe  might  possibly  be  resolved  into  a 
habit  of  the  elemental  view  of  Ufe,  a  habit  socially,  if 
not  physiologically,  transmitted.  But  what  do  we 
mean  by  this?  That  the  habit  should  result  either 
from  imitation  or  from  precept.  Precept  we  have,  for 
the  purposes  of  this  inquiry,  ruled  out.  The  habit 
is  therefore  transmitted  by  imitation ;  and  imitation 


. 


V 


t( 


22 


Vital  Lies 


M 


h 


] 


is   indeed   a   non-rational,   instinctive   matter,   quite 
suitable  to  the  Elemental  View  of  Life,  and  extremely 
useful  for  its  propagation.  So  far  we  agree  with  Mr 
Crawley.    There  is  even  something  more  to  be  said 
in  favour  of  his  thesis,  although,  curiously  enough, 
I  do  not  remember  his  having  said  it :  BeUef  is,  psycho- 
logically speaking,  itself  of  the  nature  of  a  habit ;   it 
is,  in  the  first  instance,  the  expectation  that  what  has 
happened   before   will   happen   again,    that   what   is 
afl&rmed  is  rightly  affirmed ;   it  represents  a  line  of 
least  resistance  for  mental  activity  ;  since,  were  this  not 
the  case,  we  should  not  beheve  in  the  most  necessary 
things  but  go  straw-sphtting  and  cavilling  along  our 
way,  or  rather  along  no  way  at  all.    Psychologically 
the  tendency  to  beheve  is  merely  a  differentiation  of 
the  tendency  to  acquiesce,  and  when  there  is  no  counter- 
vaiUng  stimulus  man  is  an  acquiescent  animal.     Thus 
we  get  a  tendency  to  beheve  quite  apart  from  all 
primaeval  habits,  as  a  result  of  something  underlying 
all  habits  primaeval  or  otherwise,  something  really 
very  elemental,  namely,  mental  inertness.     But  here 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  elemental  business  comes  to 
an  end.     In  "Our  Fathers  have  told  us"  there  is 
imitation,  there  is  habit,  there  is  inertness.    But  there 
is  also  the  active  observation  that  our  Fathers,  nine 
times  out  of  ten,  have  proved  right ;    and  the  active 
deduction  therefrom  that  if  it  is  in  then-  nature  to  be 
wise,  they  will  probably  prove  right  again,  more  par- 


Anthropological  Apologetics  23 

ticularly  if  their  experience  and  their  thought  happen 
to  have  dealt  with  the  subjects  involved.  This  is  the 
intelligent,  the  reasoning  portion,  as  distinguished 
from  the  "  elemental,"  as  Mr  Crawley  calls  it,  of  the 
principle  of  authority.  Now  it  is  quite  as  much  to 
this  side,  to  this  actively  inteUigent  side  that  rehgious 
"  behef  "  has  been  due  ;  exactly  as  it  is,  I  venture  to 
say  entirely  to  the  actively  inteUigent,  and  not  to  the 
**  elemental "  side  of  the  human  mind  that  religious 
beliefs,  that  is,  things  believed,  are  due.  Mr  Crawley's 
anthropological  facts,  both  in  this  book  and  in  the 
purely  scientific  (not  openly  apologetic).  "  Mystic 
Kose,"  demonstrate  that  what  seems  to  us  so  much 
raving  folly  is  merely  the  best  common  sense  which 
could  be  supphed  by  excessively  imskilled  minds, 
pressed  for  time  and  perpetually  scared  by  the  fear 
of  practical  dangers,  and  rushing  from  conclusion  to 
conclusion  without  our  leisurely  habits  of  defining 
our  meaning.  The  view  of  things  at  the  base  of  the 
rehgious  practices  of  primitive  Man  are  associations 
of  ideas,  generahzations,  deductions,  none  the  less 
inteUigent  for  being  mistaken  ;  and  accepted  by  those 
who  hold  them  because  the  enormous  majority  of 
cognate  associations  of  ideas,  generahzations,  and 
deductions  have  stood  the  test  of  experience ;  and 
because  a  proportion  of  those  which  have  not  stood 
this  test  have  appeared  to  do  so  to  the  unpractised 
mental  eye  of  the  savage  behever. 


JUA'UUWJf 


u 


24 


Vital  Lies 


The  perpetual  transformation  (and  incidental  con- 
fusion) of  the  items  of  primitive  beKef,  that  protean 
self-contradiction  of  aU  those  views  about  what  is 
or  is  not  dangerous,  that  changing  and  wavering  from 
the  notion  of  sacred-unclean  to  sacred-purifying  is, 
in  fact,  the  result  of  primitive  man's  dissatisfaction 
with  his  explanation  of  things,  and  the  proof  that  those 
explanations  are  rational  and  progressive.  This  Mr 
Crawley,  anthropologist  and  historian  as  he  is,  cannot 
fail  to  admit.    He  tells  us  (p.  262)  that— 

"  Christianity  is  no  survival  from  jmmitive  religions, 
but  a  higher  development  from  the  same  permanerU 
sources^ 

Agreed :  if  by  permanent  sources  are  meant  man- 
kind's tendency  to  observe,  to  question  and  to  reason, 
as  weU  as  mankind's  tendency  to  acquiesce  in  what 
it  is  told  and  to  be  frightened  of  inquiring  any  further. 
If  these  are  Mr  Crawley's  ''permanent  sources;'  we 
agree  with  his  tautological  addition  "  these  are'  con- 
stant." 

But  that  is  only  the  beginning  of  Mr  Crawley's 
sentence ;  here  is  the  whole  of  it :  "  Christianity  is 
no  survival  from  pnmitive  religion,  but  a  higher  develop- 
ment from  the  same  permanent  sources.  These  are 
constant,  and  the  beliefs  to  which  they  lead  are  constant 
also,  recurring  spontaneously  or  rather  through  the  same 
functional  causes ;  tradition  simply  supplies  them  with 
a  groove;* 


^ 


Anthropological  Apologetics  25 

Here  we  cease  to  agree  with  Mr  Crawley,  in  so  far 
that  we  cease  to  be  clear  about  his  meaning.  Of 
course  if  we  accept  the  "  permanent  sources  "  both  of 
developed  Christainity  and  of  crude  primaeval  myth- 
ology and  ritual  to  be  the  that  dualism  of  mental 
activity  and  mental  inertness,  they  being  constant, 
would  produce  constant  behefs ;  dut  those  behefs 
would  surely  be  the  axioms  at  the  base  of  all  science, 
rather  than  any  rehgious  formula.  But  Mr  Crawley 
makes  an  end  to  our  indecision  as  to  the  functional 
causes  to  which  he  ascribes  permanence  and  constancy 
by  specifying  the  kind  of  beliefs  to  which  they  lead,  and 
which  are  themselves  constant  and  spontaneously  re- 
current. 

"  Science,**  goes  on  Mr  Crawley — (immediately  after 
the  clause  "  tradition  simply  supplies  them  (the  spon- 
taneously recurrent  beliefs)  a  groove) — "  Science  can 
thus  endorse  the  words  of  a  thoughtful  writer  (Church 
Times,  28th  August  1903),  that  these  rites  and  beliefs 
declare  eloquently  that  there  are  spiritual  needs  common 
to  the  whole  of  mankind" 

Let  us  pause  and  think  over  this  double  assertion ; 
or  rather  sixfold ;  for  we  have  :  (1st)  Mr  Crawley 
asserting  that  (2nd)  science  endorses,  that  is  to  say, 
asserts  the  truth  of  (3rd)  the  words  of  the  Church 
Times*  Thoughtful  Writer,  which  assert  (4th)  that 
certain  rites  and  behefs  (5th)  declare  eloquently  that 
(6th)  there  are  spiritual  needs  conmion  to  the  whole  of 


tsasKmrntmim 


26 


Vital  Lies 


mankind,"  which  comes  to  saying  that  Mr  Crawley 
and  science  both  admit  the  existence  of  "spiritual 
needs  common  to  the  whole  of  mankind."    This  seems 
profoundly  true.    And  aU  the  anthropological-psycho- 
logical evidence  placed  before  us  by  Mr  Crawley  really 
seems  to  come  to  that :   mankind  has  needs  of  inquiry 
and  needs  of  acquiescence  which  are   common  to  all 
its  branches;  thus:   Primitive   peoples  showed  their 
spiritual  needs  in  their  elemental  philosophy  of  fetish- 
ism, taboo,  and,  generally  speaking,  of  the  Bull  Roarer ; 
Mediaeval  Christianity  displayed  its  spiritual  needs  in 
that  mixture  of  Hebrew  history  and  classic  philosophy 
and  cosmogony  of  which  the  poem  of  Dante  is  the 
inmiortal  expression.     And  as  to  Mr  Crawley  and  me, 
we  show    our   common   spiritual  needs  in   regarding 
both  Primitive  Rehgion   and    Mediseval    Christianity 
as  of  purely  human  and  not  at  all  supernatural  origin, 
with  the  Uttle  divergence  that  Mr  Crawley's  common 
spiritual  needs  lead  him  to  affirm  (what  my  spiritual 
needs  lead  me  to  deny)  namely,  that  this  non-super- 
natural but  eminently  human  origin  of  Christianity 
is  the  very  reason  why  Christianity  (being  spontaneous) 
had  better  continue  to  be  taught. 

But  I  have  run  on  too  fast,  and  left  the  Thoughtful 

Writer  of  the  "  Church  Times  "  too  far  behind.    Let  us 

turn  back  and  resume  our,  or  rather  Mr  Crawley's, 

quotation  of  his  thoughtful  words  : 

"These    rites    and    beliefs    declare    eloquently    that 


Anthropological  Apologetics  27 

there  are  spiritu>al  needs  common  to  the  whole  of 
mankind.^ 

We  had  got  so  far,  and  Mr  Crawley  had  agreed, 
and  agreed  also  to  disagree,  about  what  I  imagined  to 
be  those  spiritual  needs  common  to  the  whole  of  man- 
kind— the  whole,  mind  you,  Buddhists,  Mahometans, 
Shintoists,  Agnostics,  materiahsts,  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 
Now  mark  how  the  Thoughtful  Writer  of  the  Church 
Times  enumerates  these  common  spiritual  needs : 

"  The  need  of  an  Incarnate  Saviour,  of  a  Triune  God, 
of  a  Sacrament  of  Communion,  are  fundamental  aspira- 
tions of  the  human  race  crying  imperiously  for  satis- 
faction, and  that  He  by  whom  alone  they  can  be  satisfied 
completely  is  in  no  mere  phrase,  but  in  very  truth  *  the 
desire  of  all  nations.*  " 


All  these  are  indeed  spiritual  needs  of  the  Real 
Believers,  of  those  real  Christians  whom  I  mentioned 
before,  and  for  whom,  not  without  a  quite  unintel- 
lectual  sense  of  rehef,  I  shall  now  part  company  with 
the  Thoughtful  Writer  of  the  Church  Times  of  August 

28, 1903. 

How  have  these  Christians  (for,  I  think,  believers 
in  Buddha,  Mahomet,  and  Jews  and  infidels  may  be 
left  out  of  count)  come  to  feel  the  need  of  an  Incarnate 


28 


Vital  Lies 


Saviour,  of  a  Triune  God,  of  a  Sacrament  of  Com- 
munion, above  aU,  of  Him  who  is  truly  the  desired  of 
all  nations  ?    Is  it  because  their  remote,  undreamed-of 
ancestors  made  no  distinction  between  the  uncleanness 
of  girls  at  puberty  and  the  sanctity  of  holy  men,  con- 
sidered the  sorcerer  as  an  embryo  God,  ate  the  flesh 
of  strong  men  or  divine  persons,  in  short,  let  us  say, 
beUeved  in  the  sacred  BuU  Roarer  ?     We  may  know 
that  it  is  so  ;  Mr  Crawley,  the  Church  Times,  and  my 
unworthy  self.     But  let  us  ask  the  Christians  (and 
I  should  advise  no  allusions  to  anthropology !)  them- 
selves, why  they  believe  in  an  Incarnate  Saviour,  in 
a  Triune  God,  in  a  Sacrament  of  Communion  and 
more  especiaUy  in  Jesus  Christ :    I  think  they  wiU 
answer  that  they  beheve  in  it  aU  because  it  has  been 
revealed  by  God,  registered  in  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
and  taught  by  the  Church.     They  will  refer  us  to  a 
thousand   texts,    a   miUion   ecclesiastical   authorities, 
and,  if  we  press  them  further,  to  the  consensus  of 
Christianity  as  expressed  in  the  Creed  and  the  Cate- 
chism.    In  other  words,  they  beUeve  because  they  have 
been  taught.     They  have  been  taught  about  an  In- 
carnate Saviour,  a  Sacrament  of  Communion,  a  Triune 
God,  and  a  "  Jesus  Christ  his  only  son  our  Lord  who 
was  conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  Bom  of  the  Virgin 
Mary,  suffered  under  Pontius  Pilate;    was  crucified, 
dead  and  buried,  he  descended  into  hell,  the  third  day  he 
rose  again  from  the  dead,  he  ascended  into  Heaven  and 


Anthropological  Apologetics  29 

sitteth  at  the  right  hand  of  God  the  Father  Almighty, ^^ 
exactly  as  they  have  been  taught  (or  should  have  been 
taught)  the  multipHcation  table,  the  geography  of  the 
world,  and  the  chronology  of  the  kings  of  England 
(or  kings  of  some  other  place).  Indeed,  they  have 
been  taught  it  far  more  thoroughly,  since  their  tuition 
began  at  least  by  proxy  at  the  first  act  after  their 
birth ;  and  that,  after  passing  strict  examination  in 
these  matters  (even  in  the  countries  where  no  reading, 
writing,  or  arithmetic  get  taught !)  they  have  been 
made  to  repeat  the  whole  lesson  not  only  on  every 
important  occasion  of  their  lives,  but  on  every  Sunday 
and  hoHday  most  regularly.  And  to  make  the  lessons 
if  possible  still  more  effectual,  these  Christians  have 
been  taught  that  their  godfathers  and  godmothers 
promised  and  vowed  for  them  that  they  would  beUeve 
all  the  articles  of  the  Christian  Faith,  and  taught  that 
they  themselves  are  bound  to  believe  in  them  on 
account  of  their  godfathers'  and  godmothers'  promise. 
This  course  of  instruction  (so  indispensable  that  it  is, 
very  reasonably,  begun  by  proxy)  is  carried  on,  not 
only  in  Christian  communities,  but  is  pressed,  as  the 
one  thing  needful,  upon  every  other  community  what- 
soever, teaching  the  Heathen  or  the  Infidel  having 
begun  with  the  apostles  and  been  continued  through 
the  ages,  at  the  price  of  immense  sufferings  endured 
and  inflicted  in  the  process  :  for  what  are  all  the 
martyrs  and  all  the  inquisitors  save  people  who  have 


30 


Vital  Lies 


wanted  others  to  believe  in  the  Catechism  as  taught  to 
and  by  themselves  ? 

This  necessity  of  teaching  reUgious  beUefs  has  been 
moreover  declared  by  the  fact  that,  with  the  exception 
of  the  Hebrew  Patriarchs  and  Prophets  and  the  Em- 
peror Trajan,  no  single  human  being,  however  virtuous 
and  wise,  has  been  admitted  to  heaven  if  bom  before 
the  teaching  of  these  truths  had  begun,  or  bom  in 
places  and  circumstances  where  they  had  not  been 
taught.  And  finally,  what  greater  proof  that  rehgious 
beUefs  required  teaching  than  the  practice  of  the 
Almighty  Himself,  who  found  it  necessary,  not  only 
to  make  (perhaps  rather  sketchy)  revelations  of 
them  to  Moses  and  the  prophets,  but  eventually 
to  send  his  Only  Begotten  Son  to  complete  the 
information,  followed  by  the  Apostles,  the  Evan- 
geUsts,  St  Paul,  the  Fathers,  and  all  the  Councils 
and  Doctors  to  settle  the  details  of  this  necessary 
instruction. 

Surely  in  the  face  of  such  a  consensus  on  the  need 
for  special  religious  tuition  we  must  dissent  from 
Mr  Crawley  and  his  Thoughtful  Writer  in  the  Church 
Times,  and  recognize  that  the  recognition  of  the  need 
for  an  Incarnate  Saviour,  a  Triune  God,  and  a  Sacra- 
ment of  Communion,  let  alone  the  recognition  of 
some  omitted  but  important  items  like  Everlasting 
Reward  in  Heaven  and  Everlasting  Punishment  in  Hell, 
could   scarcely  be  trusted  to  elemental   philosophies 


Anthropological  Apologetics  31 

subconsciously    inherited    from   cannibal    and  taboo- 
fetishistic  savages. 


VI 

Christian  beliefs  require  to  be  taught :  that  much 
we  have  upon  the  very  best  authority.  I  scarcely 
think  Mr  Crawley  would  be  of  a  different  opinion ; 
nor,  to  do  him  justice,  have  I  found  in  all  his  book  a 
single  word  suggesting  that  the  truths  of  anthropology 
and  comparative  mythology  (however  much  they 
justify  those  of  Anglican  Christianity)  should  be  taught 
in  the  place  of,  or  in  addition  to,  the  catechism.  This 
is  one  of  those  questions  where  modern  philosophy  has 
shown  its  superiority  by  recognizing  the  existence  of 
different  planes  of  thought,  a  conception  lacking  equally 
in  the  cmde  systems  of  ideology  and  in  the  theology  of 
the  past.  The  piUine  of  causality,  for  instance,  is  now 
recognized  to  be  different  from  the  jo^ne  of  freedom ; 
the  plane  of  natural  science  and  psychology  is  a  different 
plane  from  that  of  metaphysics  ;  and  it  is  because  these 
planes  are  different  that  our  mind  can  go  from  one  to 
the  other  and  even  co-exist  in  several  at  a  time  (time, 
like  space,  being  outside  the  plane  of  pure  being) 
without  the  smallest  contradiction  or  inconsistency.  ^ 

*  This  invaluable  addition  to  obscurantist  philosophy  heis  been 
admirably  systematized  in  a  work  of  Professor  Miinsterberg,  whose 
scope  and  importance  is  clearly  set  forth  on  the  paper  wrapper  in 


w 


32 


Vital  Lies 


Similarly  the  plane  of  the  anthropologist  and  myth- 
ologist  is  independent  of  the  plane  of  the  Christian 
behever,  and  the  connection  between  the  two  must  on 
no  account  be  interpreted  as  a  causal  or  merely  scientific 

which,  as  in  a  mantle  of  honour,  it  is  presented  to  the  reader  by  an 
appreciative  publisher.  I  will  copy  out  this  document  in  exten^o, 
as  affording  a  perfect  schematic  view  of  those  various  planes  of 
thought  which  (although  occasionally  connected  in  practice)  must, 
according  to  this  school  of  philosophy,  be  kept  intellectually  apart. 

"A  book  which  ought  to  appeal  to  every  serious  reader  who 
seeks  a  deeper  meaning  for  his  life. 

The 
ETERNAL  VALUES 

BY 

Hugo  Munstsbbebg 
Professor  of  Psychology,  Harvard  University 


Part  L 
The  Meaning  of  Values. 


Part  II. 
The  Logical  Values. 

Part  in. 
The  iEsthetical  Values. 

Part  IV. 
The  Ethical  Values. 

Part  V. 
Metaphysical  Values. 


I.  Physical  Nature. 

II.  The  Psychical  Nature. 

III.  The  personalities. 

IV.  The  obligations. 
V.  The  satisfaction  of  the  Will. 

VI.  The  Eternal  Values. 

VII.  The  values  of  Existence. 
VIII.  The  value  of  Connection. 

IX.  The  values  of  Unity. 
X.  The  values  of  Beauty. 

/     XI.  The  values  of  Development. 
I   XII.  The  values  of  Achievement. 

/  Xni.  The  values  of  Holiness. 
i  XIV.  The  values  of  Absoluteness. 


{ 
{ 


"  We  have  come  to  feel  that  life  does  not  become  more  tcorth  living  b^ 
a  mere  heaping  up  of  scientific  facts.  We  seek  a  philosophy  which  can 
do  justice  to  aU  the  experiences  and  aU  the  aspirations  of  the  ttoentieth 


y 


Anthropological  Apologetics  33 

one  ;  it  is  far  more  probably  one  of  those  connections 
which  belong  to  the  domain  of  Will.  The  ex- 
planations of  the  anthropological  mythologist  are 
therefore  not  intended  to  confirm  the  rehgious  beUefs  of 
those  who  already  possess  such  ;  that  possession  as  the 
Church  (while  teaching  those  behefs)  has  always  taught, 
is  a  matter  of  free  will.  The  anthropological  myth- 
ologist's  explanations  being  purely  scientific,  regard 
only  the  causes  why  that  beUef — which  from  the 
scientific  (causal)  point  of  view  is,  of  course,  determined 
(though  from  the  metaphysic  or  theologic  point  of 
view,  of  course,  free)  has  been  determined,  in  other 
words,  has  had  to  exist.  These  two  planes — that  of 
the  behever  and  of  the  anthropological  mythologist — 
do  not  conflict,  because  they  never  come  into  contact : 
nothing,  even  in  the  most  empirical  sense,  is  rarer  than 
that  a  Christian  behever  should  be  an  anthropological 

century,  and  yet  which  avoids  the  shallowness  of  modem  positivism 
and  scepticism.  Mere  preaching  and  mere  enthusiasm  are  insufficient. 
What  is  needed  is  a  starting  point  for  any  new  development,  is  a 
thorough  system  of  thought  in  which  our  right  and  our  duty  to  believe 
in  the  eternal  ideals  are  proved  to  the  sceptical  thinker.  Truth  and 
beauty,  progress  and  morality,  religion  and  metaphysics  must  bt 
recognized  as  absolute  valuss  in  sharpest  contrast  to  the  Pragmatism 
of  our  time.     The  '  Eternal  Values  '  aims  to  fulfil  this  demand." 

After  which  valuation,  not  only  of  Existence,  Beauty,  Develop 
ment.  Achievement,  Holiness,  Absoluteness,  etc.,  but  of  Professor 
Miinsterberg's  attempt  to  value  them  as  Eternal  there  remains  to 
deal  with  only  one  other  value,  and  this  accordingly  closes  the  list 
in  capitals  only  one  size  smaller  than  the  "  Eternal  Values  "  of  the 
title: 

Tbn  Shillings  and  Sixpence  Net. 


34 


Vital  Lies 


J  ^ 


!) 


I. 


mythologist,  or  vice  versa ;  and  on  the  rare  occasions 
when  these  different  planes  co-exist  in  the  same  indi- 
vidual, they  are  nevertheless  parallel  and  distinct, 
e.g.  the  anthropological  mythologist,  as  is  shown  by 
this  very  book,  never  dreams  of  addressing  his  purely 
scientific  [causative]  and  deterministic  remarks  to  minds 
on  the  purely  metaphysic  {i.e.  free,  non-causative) 
plane  of  belief.  And  therefore  it  is  not  only  legiti- 
mate, but  inevitable  (if  one  may  use  the  word  in  such 
philosophical  discussions)  that  Mr  Crawley's  book  is 
written  for  persons  who  are  on  the  plane  of  not 
beheving  in  AngUcan  Christianity.  For  instance  I  find 
on  page  261  : 

"  When  we  recognize,  as  the  anthropological  evidence 
enables  us  to  do,  that  it  (Christianity)  is  rooted  more 
firmly  than  other  systems  in  the  good  ground  of  human 
nature,  and  that  its  vital  principle  is  the  instinct  for  life 
in  its  purest  form,  we  have,  I  think,  secured  a  new 
method  of  defence  which  is  both  positive  and  scientific.'' 
You  see  by  those  two  last  adjectives  that  we  are  on 
the  causative  plane,  that  of  mere  science,  not  of  meta- 
physics, of  the  Will  and  Behef.  My  own  remarks  in 
answer  exist  also,  be  it  well  understood,  on  that  merely 
scientific  and  positive  plane,  for  I  have  no  sort  of  hope, 
that  any  genuine  Christian  beHever  will  ever  come 
across,  or  coming  across,  ever  be  influenced  by,  them. 
And  here  are  some  of  these  my  purely  rationahstic  and 
quite  causally  determined  reflections. 


Anthropological  Apologetics  35 


VII 


(Excursus) 

"  Concentrated  vitality,''  writes  Mr  Crawley,  "  is  in 
itself  neither  good  nor  bad,  but  for  prax^ical  purposes  it 
is  a  blessing  only  if  it  can  be  safely  guided  into  proper 
channels." 

What  practical  purposes  ?  Whose  practical  pur- 
poses ?  The  Cultus  of  "  Concentrated  Vitality,"  the 
"  Elemental  View  of  Life  " — would  seem,  from  Mr 
Crawley's  admiration  for  it,  to  have  been  a  blessing  for 
primitive  man  ;  since,  had  it  not  been  a  blessing,  even  if 
only  in  disguise,  why  should  it  be  pointed  out  as  the 
honoured  ancestor  from  whom  less  primitive  religions 
inherit  their  rights  ?  The  practical  purposes  must  there- 
fore extend  to  more  recent  times ;  and  Mr  Crawley  must 
mean  that  although  the  cultus  of  Concentrated  Vitality 
was  a  blessing  once  upon  a  time,  and  perhaps  a  blessing 
in  its  indirect  influence  upon  the  future,  the  only  cultus 
which  could  be  a  blessing  later  on  would  be  the  cultus, 
not  of  Concentrated  Vitality  as  such,  but  that  of  the 
Safe  Guidance  of  such  Concentrated  Vitality  into  Proper 
Channels.  Instead  of  the  Concentrated  VitaKty,  it  is 
the  Safe  Guidance  which  has  become  the  blessing,  or 
else  the  Proper  Channels.  But  this  means  a  change  in 
the  cultus,  corresponding  to  the  change  impUed  in  the 


36 


Vital  Lies 


Anthropological  Apologetics  37 


ill 


passage  from  the  notion  "  holy-dangerous-unclean " 
to  the  notion  "  holy-desirable-pure," — the  change,  in 
fact,  from  a  reUgion  of  sorcery  to  a  reUgion  of  morality. 
The  savage,  or  the  half-civiUzed  man,  may  worship  a 
"  Concentrated  VitaUty  "  because  he  conceives  it  as 
something  vaguely  human  and  amenable  to  propitia- 
tion ;  his  worship  depends  not  upon  some  kind  of 
admiration  for  "  Life "  and  whatever  symboUzes 
"  Life,"  but  upon  the  notion  that  **  Life  "  may  play 
him  a  trick  unless  "  Life  "  is  respectfully  treated : 
indiscriminate  veneration  depends  upon  undiscrimin- 
ating  fear.  But  once  man  guesses  that  "  Life "  is 
not  a  kind  of  human  being,  but  a  way  we  have  of 
thinking  of  certain  processes,  such  wholesale  worship 
comes  to  an  end,  and  mankind  begins  to  agree  with 
Mr  Crawley  that  **  concentrated  vitality  is  in  itself 
neither  good  nor  bad,  hut  for  practical  purposes  it 
is  a  blessing  only  if  it  can  he  safely  guided  into  proper 
channels. ^^ 

Civilization  impUes  the  gradual  development  of  a 
principle  of  human  selection,  of  a  choice  by  which  man 
encourages  what  makes  for  his  safety  and  happiness, 
while  discouraging  what  does  not ;  and  it  implies,  of 
course,  also  the  gradual  replacing  thereby  of  the  notion 
of  man  being  in  the  hands  of  forces  which  must  be 
propitiated  because  they  are  stronger  than  he,  and 
which  can  be  propitiated  because  they  have  the  same 
nature  as  himself. 


Mankind  gradually  learns  that  only  other  human 
beings  can  be  propitiated  by  human  civilities  ;  and 
that  while  that  which  is  more  powerful  than  mankind 
cannot  be  propitiated  in  any  way,  that  which  can  be 
averted  or  turned  to  man's  purpose  need  no  longer  be 
propitiated :  we  do  not  compliment  the  bacillus  of 
malaria,  we  destroy  him ;  we  do  not  pray  to  the 
lightning,  we  conduct  it  away  from  our  houses.  The 
eacredness  of  beneficent  or  mahgn  natural  forces  and 
outer  objects  is  gradually  replaced  by  the  sacredness 
of  such  of  our  feelings  and  actions  as  conduce  to  more 
universal  and  enduring  safety  and  happiness.  What 
becomes  important  is  not  hfe,  however  c<mcewtratedt 
but  how  life  is  Hved. 


VIII 

Speaking  of  the  chaotic  mentality  of  primitive 
mankind,  Mr  Crawley  informs  us  (p.  252),  that  in  this, 
may  I  call  it  elementary,  if  not  elemental,  view  of  hfe 
discoverable  in  savages,  "  not  only  can  the  Species 
not  he  thought  of  apart  from  the  individual,  hut  the 
*  individual '  is  not  an  abstraction  either,  and  the  species 
inheres  in  this  or  that  other  individtud  only.  Take 
away  aU  the  individuals,  and  no  conception  of  the  species 
remains." 

Yet,  on  an  immediately  preceding  page  we  were 


38 


Vital  Lies 


told,  as  if  co-existence  with  such  jumbles  could  be  a 
recommendation  for  any  idea,   that    "  doctrines    like 
that  of  the  Trinity  are  not  superimposed  upon  mono- 
theism, hit  are  implicit  already  in  the  primitive  mind.^^ 
Implicit.  ...     A  great  deal  has    been    done  by 
theology,  orthodox  and  unorthodox,  with  that  modest 
word,    and   it   would   be   interesting   to    know    the 
precise  meaning  of  thereof  in  this  quotation.      "  Not 
superimposed  "  suggests  that  implicit  means  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  really  is  in  the  Primitive  Mind, 
and  that  the  Primitive  Mind,  if  only  it  could  get  over 
its  Uttle  difficulty  (above  mentioned)  of  disentangling 
the  notions  of  individual  and  species,  would,  without 
ceasing  to  be  primitive,  discover  or  unwrap  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  which  lay,  like  the  petals  of  a  rose, 
dose-enfolded  in  the  sheath  of  that  confusion  between 
individual  and  species.     Or  is  it  perhaps  Mr  Crawley's 
opinion   that  the   confusion   between   individual  and 
species  so  characteristic,  he  tells  us,  of  the  primitive 
mind,  is  exactly  the  stuff — let  us  say  the  rosebud — out 
of  which  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  wiU,  in  a  genial 
theological  sunmier,  be  sure  to  unfold  its  hitherto  only 
implicit  existence  ? 

Be  this  as  it  may,  that  statement  about  the  primitive 
mind's  little  difficulty  with  the  individual  and  the 
species,  might  suggest  to  some  mere  rationalist  that 
the  implicit  existence  therein  of  a  particular  theological 
doctrine  is  not  necessarily  an  argument  in  favour  of 


Anthropological  Apologetics  39 

that  doctrine  being  acceptable  to  a  mind,  or  even  to 
minds  (for  we  have  distinguished  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  species),  having  long  ceased  to  be 
primitive. 

But  in  all  this  that  Mr  Crawley  calls  "  a  new  method 
of  defence  which  is  hath  positive  and  scientific,^^  there  is, 
as  in  cognate  less  scientific  apologetics,  a  very  curious 
and  recurrent  oversight.  In  their  anxiety  to  prove 
that  rehgious  behefs,  specified  or  unspecified,  are 
desirable  and  indispensable,  our  apologists  ignore  that 
the  essence  of  a  religious  belief  is  that  it  should  be  held 
to  be  true.  They  forget  that  although  such  beliefs 
may  be  quite  wonderfully  useful  as  long  as  they  are 
held,  they  are  not  held  except  inasmuch  as  they  are 
held  to  he  true.  And  they  will  cease  to  be  held  as  true 
so  soon  as  it  is  understood  that  they  originate  not  in 
Divine  revelation  but  in  the  jumbled  abortive  thoughts 
and  panic-ridden  rituals  of  savage  men. 

"  These  analogies  from  savage  culture,^''  writes  Mr 
Crawley  (p.  261  et  seq.),  "  show  that  religion  .  .  .  is  a 
direct  outcome  of  elemental  human  nature,  and  that  this 
elemental  human  nature  remains  practically  unchanged 
.  .  .  if  a  savage  eats  the  flesh  of  a  strong  man  or  divine 
person,  and  a  modern  Christian  partakes  sacramentally 
of  Christ's  body  and  blood  under  the  forms  of  bread 
and  wine,  there  is  evidently  a  human  need  behind  both 
acts  which  prompts  them  and  is  responsible  for  their 
similarity. '^ 


40 


Vital  Lies 


But  need  to  eat  a  strong  man's  (or  "  divine  person's  ") 
flesh  in  order  to  get  his  strength,  is  precisely  not  a 
constarU  need.    What  is  constant  is  the  need  to  get 
increase  of  strength  somehow.     The  cannibal  habit  is 
due  to  a  mistaken  inference,  namely,  that,  since  some 
of  the  bodily  elements  of  an  ox  are  transmitted  to  us 
when  we  eat  a  beefsteak,  the  enviable  quaUties  of  a 
strong  or  holy  man  will  be  transmitted  by  the  same 
process;    the  wrong  inference  being  further  compli- 
cated by  a  confusion  between  various  kinds  of  desirable 
quahties  and  their  modes  of  transmission.    This  being 
the  case,  once  the  mistake  is  cleared  away,  the  need  for 
eating  strong  men  comes  to  an  end,  and  the  need  of 
increasing  one's  own  strength— which  alone  is  really 
constant— resorts  to  "  Plasmon,"  or  Sandow's  method, 
or  electric  belts,  or  Swedish  massage,  or  some  other 
substitute  for  the  eating  of  "Long  Pig."    And  the 
same  would  apply  to  that  sacramental  communion 
which  is,  according  to  Mr  Crowley's  hypothesis,  but  a 
more  refined  substitute  for  ritual  cannibaUsm.     With 
the  difference  that  the  desired  and  transferable  virtues 
ceasing  to  be  bodily,  to  become  more  and  more  spiritual, 
and  spiritual   conditions   being   more   dominated   by 
expectation  than  bodily  ones,  an  increase  of  hoKness, 
or  at  least  of  the  f eeKng  of  hohness  was  actually  obtained 
by  partaking,  in  their  most  bodily  manner  imaginable, 
of  what  was  beUeved  to  be  the  Divinity's  mystic 
substance,  was  actually  obtained,  and  undoubtedly  still  is. 


Anthropological  Apologetics  41 

But  will  such  a  sense  of  spiritual  elevation  accompany 
the  taking  of  the  Eucharist  once  it  is  clearly  understood 
that  this  rite  is  not  a  mystery  instituted  by  Christ  as 
the  seal  of  his  unending  sacrifice  for  man's  soul  or  the 
symbol  of  his  unbroken  communion  with  man's  spirit, 
but  a  survival,  transformed  by  successive  interpretative 
misconceptions,  of  the  savage's  mistaken  theory  that 
since  eating  dead  ox  furnishes  us  with  bodily  strength, 
so  partaking  of  the  flesh  of  deceased  men  of  mark  must 
similarly  endow  the  eater  with  some  of  their  character- 
istic superiority  ? 


IX 

The  rehgious  practices  and  prohibitions  of  Primitive 
Man  have  been  shown  by  Mr  Crawley  to  have  had  very 
utiHtarian  objects.  "  The  taboo  "  he  tells  us  (p.  295), 
"  is  intended  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  human  nature, 
to  keep  intact  the  sources  of  life'^ 

So  also  is  that  very  unreUgious  modem  equivalent, 
Hygiene ;  with  the  difference  that  it  succeeds  rather 
better.  Mr  Crawley's  account  of  the  Taboo-rehgion, 
with  its  thousandfold  precautions  against  *'  influences  " 
from  other  individuals,  from  goods  and  chattels,  from 
surroimdings,  from  places,  from  food  and  drink,  even 
from  the  Taboo-ist's  own  wife,  who  had  better  have  a 
brief  pre-nuptial  idyl  (if  possible  with  some  "  holy  '* 


42 


Vital  Lies 


man),  for  the  removal  of  such  "  influences,"  the  anthro- 
pological chapters  of  this  book  and  the  whole  of  Mr 
Crawley's  "  Mystic  Kose  "  have  left  in  me,  at  least,  an 
overwhehning  impression  not  only  that  savages  are  in 
constant  terror  about  their  hfe  and  health,  but  that 
the  precautions  on  which  they  spend  much  of  their 
time  and  thought,  are  just  those  which,  being  utterly 
mistaken,    do   not   preserve   the    "integrity   of   their 
nature  "  or  "  keep  intact  the  sources  of  their  hfe." 
But  stop    ...    I  think  I  have  misunderstood  Mr 
Crawley's   thought.     Or   is   it   possible   that   he   has 
misunderstood  it  a  httle  himself?     The  integrity  to 
be  preserved  was  not  the  integrity  of  the  nature  of 
those  poor  heathens  taken  individually,  or  even  collect- 
ively ;    it  was  not  the  wholeness  of  wind  and  hmb 
which  they  themselves  beheved  to  be  threatened  by 
some  of  those  everlasting  influences  (whence  Influenza  /) 
neither  are  the  sources  of  life  which  were  kept  intact 
that  which  our  primaeval  ancestors  discussed  in  less 
elevated  phraseology.     The  integrity  was  the  integrity 
of  Human  Nature  sub  specie  cetemitatis,  or,  at  least,  sub 
specie  historice  ;   and  keeping  intact  the  sources  of  life 
meant,  as  appears  by  comparison  with  other  passages 
of  Mr  Crawley's  writings,  desisting  from  habits,  let  us 
say,  for  pohteness'  sake,  excesses  in  infanticide,  which 
would   have  put   an  end   to  the  race   or  the   tribe 
altogether. 

Of  course  integrity  of  Human  Nature  was  not  con- 


1 


Anthropological  Apologetics  43 

templated   by   the   untutored   minds   of   those   poor 
Indians  (or  poor  whatever  they  were)  when  they  gave 
themselves  such  trouble  to  invent  and  observe  Taboos 
entirely  miscalculated  for  their  intended  purposes.     Or 
rather— since  all  this  matter  is  extremely  comphcated, 
and  we  must  see  to  no  confusion  of  those  various  irre- 
ducible phnes  of  thought  above  mentioned — or  rather 
what  was  intended  by  those  primitive  people  was  not 
in  the  least  the  intention  for  which  those  tahoos  were 
really  intended;    thxU  intention  being  such  as  could 
exist  only  in  the  Will  ...  no,  not  of  Providence,  for 
we  are  on  the  strictly  Scientific,  Causal  (anthropological- 
comparative-mythological)    plane    at    present,    where 
Providence    can't    be— well,   shall   we  say,   that  this 
intention  about  the  integrity  of  human  nature  and  the 
intactness  of  the  sources  of  Life,  could  exist  only  in  the 
Will  of  the  Race  ?  or  could  exist  perhaps  in  the  mind 
of  philosophers,  more  particularly  Mr  Crawley's  and 
mine? 

Because  what  we  really  mean  is  that  although  those 
taboo-customs  of  primitive  mankind  were  not  very 
well  adapted  to  their  objects,  at  least  not  at  all  as 
adapted  as  good  hygienic  rules  perhaps  supplemented 
by  some  rough  and  ready  pohce-measures,  yet  they 
produced  habits  of  refraining  from  definite  acts,  and  of 
shrinking  from  general  disobedience  such  as  the  mere 
conmion-sense  imperatives  of  more  scientific  times 
could   not   have   produced,   particularly   when   they 


44 


Vital  Lies 


I 


themselves  did  not  exist.  We  mean,  at  all  events, 
that  such  Taboo-beliefs  and  customs  begat  habits  of 
massive,  undiscriminating,  automatic  acquiescence  and 
repulsion,  such  as  alone  could  impel  and  restrain  our 
gross  and  violent  ancestors. 

Ancestors  ?  But  are  you  sure  it  is  only  ancestors  ? 
Why  not  descendants  also,  and  more  especially,  why 
not  contemporaries  ? 


But  before  entering  upon  this  question  we  must 
return  to  that  essential  philosophical  distinction,  always 
implied  in  such  apologies  for  reUgion :   the  distinction 
between  the  phne  of  scientific  (causal)  thought  and 
that    of    immediate    experience,    undetermined    Witt, 
morality  and  expediency,  the  plane— shall  we  coin  a 
Bergsonian    phrase  ?—  of     "  lucid    instinct."      For 
returning  to  it  we  shall  find  dependent  thereon  a 
further  development  of  separate  planes  ;  and  first  and 
foremost,  the  phne  of  the  Subject  and  the  plane  of  the 
Object.    The  subject  is  I  and  is  also  you,  when  you  are 
thought  of  as  part  of  we,  that  is  to  say,  when  you  and 
I  are  of  one  mind  about  something  or  somebody  that 
is  not  we ;    the  Object  is,  of  course,  he,  she,  or  it,  or 
they,  Man,  Humanity,  in  fact  anybody  who  is  not  / 
nor  you,  you  thought  of  as  part  of  we ;   in  fact,  the 


t 


Anthropological  Apologetics  45 

Object  is  anybody  who  is  talked  of,  but  not  talked  to. 
Now,  it  is  perfectly  evident  that  on  the  plane  of  the 
Subject,  it  is  no  use  hoping  for  the  morahzing  and 
civihzing  results  of  reUgious  belief  (say  in  the  Trinity, 
the  Fall,  the  Sacraments,  to  which  I  really  must  add 
Paradise,  or  at  least  Hell)  by  insisting  to  ourselves,  to 
you  and  me  that  such  beliefs  would  make  us  more  moral 
and  more  really  progressive.  The  Subject  always 
beUeves  exclusively  because  what  he  beheves  is  true ; 
besides,  the  Subject  is  very  rarely  in  need  of  being 
improved  in  any  way  whatsoever. 

But  it  is,  naturally,  entirely  different  when  we  pass 
on  to  the  plane  of  the  Object.    The  Object,  remember, 
is  the  person,  or  group  of  persons  (say  mankind,  for 
instance)  who  is  being  talked  about,  and  as  such  is,  of 
course,  not  taken  into  our  confidence.     It  is  the  most 
obvious  thing  in  the  world,  and  indeed  quite  one  of 
the  commonest,  to  remark  upon  the  Object's  possession 
of  desirable  qualities  hke  those  of  moraUty  and  that 
happy  mixture  of  conservative  tenacity  and  readiness 
for  improvement  which  is  so  necessary  for  true  pro- 
gress ;  and  to  discuss  the  causal  reasons  for  his  having 
held  or  still  holding  the  particular  religious  beliefa 
which,  owing  to  mere  causal  reasons,  will  result  in  an 
increase  of  such  a  desirable  blend  of  quahties ;   for  I 
need  scarcely  remind  the  Serious  Reader  (and  all  my 
Readers  are,  I  hope,  serious  Subjects,  not  Objects)  that 
so  soon  as  we  are  on  the  plane  of  the  Object,  we 


III 


i 
[111 

mi 


■' 


46 


Vital   Lies 


get  back  to  causality  and  determination,  which  are 
evidently  out  of  place  when  We— You  and  I— are 
talking  as  Subjects. 

To  return  then  to  the  question  left  behind  during 
this  indispensable  philosophical  a  parte. 

Of  course  there  can  be  no  question  (subjectively 
speaking)  of  our  beheving  in  any  doctrines  because 
they  have  conduced  and  may  stiU  conduce  to  human 
welfare ;  and  their  utihty  has  depended  upon  their 
being  believed.  But,  having  discussed  (most  objectively, 
of  course)  all  the  advantages  which  accrued,  thanks  to 
our  ancestors  having  held  these  behefs,  it  is  perfectly 
legitimate  to  consider  whether  similar  advantages 
might  not  be  obtained,  or  at  least  retained,  by  those 
behefs  continuing  to  be  held  by  our  contemporaries. 

The  planes  are  being  kept  separate.  The  Reader 
and  Mr  Crawley  and  I  are  talking  of  other  persons, 
not  of  ourselves. 

And  this  is  how  we  talk  :  Mr  Crawley  doing  for  the 
moment  the  talking,  and  the  reader— perhaps  that 
serious  Thinker  of  the  Church  Times  of  August  28th, 
1903-<loing  the  hstening,  all  of  us,  bien  erUendu 
Subjects. 

Mr  Crawley  loquitur  ("  Tree  of  Life,"  p.  266). 

"  Religion  affirms  not  morality  nor  altruism,  nor  science, 
hut  health  and  strength  of  body  and  character,  physical 
and  moral  cleanliness  and  decency,  deference  to  age, 
experience  and  position,  principles  whidi  are  bound  up 


Anthropological  Apologetics  47 

with  the  elemental  view  of  life.  .  .  .  It  is  objected  to 
religion  that  it  has  opposed  every  new  movement  which 
in  the  end  made  for  human  development  and  happiness. 
This  is  true,  and  it  is  well  for  humanity  that  it  is.  Every- 
thing that  is  new  needs  testing,  and  the  best  test  is  that  of 
the  permanent  in  human  nature.  It  is  no  less  true  that 
in  the  end  religion  has  accepted  every  new  movement 
which  has  been  made  for  human  development  and 
happiness.    .    .    . 

"  The  end  of  science  is  knowledge,  the  end  of  religion 
is  life.    .    .    . 

"Religion  stands  for  progress;  not  only  is  it  the 
permanent  foundation  of  character,  but  it  is  bound  up 
with  the  roots  of  being.  .  .  .  Reason  has  always  a  tendency 
to  interfere  with  the  normal,  and  the  tendency  is  kept  in 
check  by  religion.*^ 

There  is  much  truth  in  this ;  very  much  and  very 
practically  valuable  truth.  In  fact,  so  much  truth  that 
we  had  better  go  and  preach  it  to  those  behevers,  just 
to  show  them  how  important  it  is  that  they  should 
beheve. 

Tut,  tut !  You  are  forgetting  that  we  are  discussing 
behef  objectively  ;  the  behevers  are  objects  of  discussion  ; 
you  mustn't  go  and  talk  to  them  as  if  they  were 
Subjects!  You  can'<— logically  can't— talk  to,  or  at 
least  talk  with,  an  Object.  An  Object  is  on  a  different 
plane  ;  it's  Kke  belonging  to  a  different  caste  or  class  : 
it  can't  ever  be  we. 


V  I 


48 


Vital  Lies 


(| 


i 


Mr  Crawley  continues  to  quote  from  page  304  : 
**  The  religious  spirit  always  tends  to  separate  from 
the  rational  and  to  confine  itself  to  the  elemental  sphere  of 
human  energy,  while  the  rational  tends  to  break  away 
from  the  vital  instirui.  .  .  .  We  can  say  that  religion, 
becoming  itself  a  cause,  has  guided  and  influenced  the 
whole  of  human  evolution.  Institutions,  when  once 
formed,  are  preserved  by  the  religious  impulse  which 
produced  them,  and  their  life  is  then  protected  by  a  veil 
of  religious  mystery  covering  what  is  holy  and  not  to  be 
defiled:' 

XI 

Now  that  again,  I  say,  is  wonderfully  true.  The 
only  thing  is,  how  about  people — not  you  or  me,  of 
course,  since  we  cannot  be  Objects,  but  people  like  you 
or  me,  who  have  somehow  developed  their  reason,  even 
to  the  extent  of  being  able  to  follow  such  arguments 
as  the  above  and  such  evidence  as  is  furnished  by 
anthropology,  the  Bull-Roarer  sort  of  thing,  I  mean. 
Well,  would  you  say  that  we  are,  so  to  speak,  "  breaking 
away  from  vital  instincts  ?  " 

Answer  :  Of  course  not.  Is  it  not  written  on  page 
305  that  ** .  .  .  in  modem  civilization  the  process  of 
differentiation  has  gone  further,  and  the  religious  sphere 
is  narrowed  until  it  embraces,  as  a  rule,  merely  the  sub- 
ccnscious  life  of  the  average  individual^  and  the  domestic 


Anthropological  Apologetics  49 

relation  of  the  family  circle,  and  not  all  these,  but  only 
such  part  as  is  not  concerned  with  practical  life.'' 

To  be  sure  !  I  was  forgetting  the  sub-consciou>s  action 
of  religion  ;  the  discovery  of  sub-consciousness  is  really 
one  of  the  finest  achievements  of  modern  thought ; 
you  must  admit  that  the  rational  principle  was  doing 
useful  work  for  once  in  estabUshing  that.  Or  perhaps 
it  was  not  the  rational  principle  that  discovered  sub- 
consciousness ? 

But  without  answering  this  question,  Mr  Crawley 
merely  emphasizes  the  importance  of  sub- con- 
sciousness. 

"  Psychologists  "  he  tells  us  (p.  296),  "  are  now  agreed 
that  instinctive  tendencies  have  paramourit  influence  over 
our  mental  processes.'' 
So  they  have ;  and  quite  right  too  ! 
"  Well  then,"  continues  Mr  Crawley  (p.  305)  "... 
Even  in  cases  where  the  influence  of  rationalism  or 
expediency  has  completely  eocduded  religion  from  the 
consciousness,  yet  the  material  from  which  it  may  grow 
still  remains." 

That's  evidently  the  case  with  You  and  Me— I  beg 
your  pardon,  not  you  and  me  precisely,  for  it's  impohte 
as  well  as  unphilosophical  to  discuss  present  company — 
I  mean  it's  the  case  with  a  category  of  minds  of  which 
ours  may  be  considered  typical.  Pray  forgive  my 
interruption. 
"  Yet  the  material  from  which  it  may  grow  still  remains 
2d 


50 


Vital  Lies 


I! 


and  gives  rise  sub-consciously  to  principles  which  act 
essentmlly  though  not  consciously  religious.    .    .    ." 

[The  whole  thing  is,  of  course,  suh-consdous-the 
sub-conscious  is  full  of  rehgion,  and  the  principles, 
although  conscious  in  themselves,  are  not  consciously 
but  sub-consciously  rehgious.]  You  mean  that  it 
gives  rise  sub-consciously  to  principles  "which  are 
essentially,  though  not  consciously  religious,  as  in  the 
relations  of  domestic  life,  the  personal  rules  of  honour 
and  decency,  duty,  commercial  and  social,  rdigim  still 

inspires  these.    In  such  cases  religion  has  become  sub- 
conscious once  more.   ..." 

[Was  it  sub-conscious  originaUy  ?    I  had  imagined 
that  aU  that  "  elemental  view  of  life,"  and  the  taboos 
and  the  sacredness  of  the  BuU-Roarer,  had  been  con- 
scious ?     But  perhaps  savages  aren't  really  ever  very 
conscious,  and,  of  course,  their  rationahsm  is  quite 
rudimentary  ;  not  yet  at  aU  destructive  to  normal  hfe.] 
"  And:'  continues  Mr  Crawley,  "  when  we  are  told 
that  sane  and  normal  characters  do  actually  live  without 
religion,  the  reply  is  that  they  are  stUl  religious  sub- 
consciously, and  in  many  cases  have  turned  against  the 
ancient  faith  through  some  misconception  of  its  meaning.'* 
[Quite  so.    And  Mr  Crawley's  book  is  intended  to 
show  just  them-people  like  me,  for  instance,  who  are 
rehgious  in  their  sub-consciousness,  the  anthropological- 
mythological   facts,    and    the   sociological-evolutional 
reasons,  why  they  had  better  cease  turning  against 


Anthropological  Apologetics  5 


their  ancient  creed  and  now  sub-conscious.  For  who 
would  turn  against  the  Trinity,  the  Sacraments,  the 
Fall  and  the  Redemption,  the  whole  catechism  in  fact, 
once  he  understood  that  their  meaning  was  only  to 
keep  up  the  Integrity  of  the  Elemental  Life  and  the 
Intactness  of  the  Springs  of  Existence,  and  is,  for  all 
philosophical  purposes,  identical  with  the  meaning  of 
eating  the  flesh  of  a  strong  man  or  divine  person  or  any 
of  the  other,  not  quite  so  quotable,  practices  of 
Primitive  Peoples  ? 

And  this  makes  me  think.  .  .  .  Now  let  me  see 
whether  I  have  got  hold  of  my  thought  properly,  for  one 
had  best  be  careful  of  one's  steps  among  all  these  different 
logical  planes,  and  this  conscious  and  sub-conscious. 

Well,  what  occurs  to  me  is  this  :  Since,  as  Mr  Crawley 
says,  (and,  of  course,  he  must  know!)  religion  was 
originally  sub-conscious  (so  I  gather  from  his  words 
"  religion  has  become  sub-conscious  once  more  "),  and 
since  reUgion  can,  in  some  cases,  safeguard  the  relations 
of  domestic  life,  the  personal  rules  of  honour  and  decency, 
duty,    etc.,    by   means  of  principles  not  consciously 
religious,  and  when  itself  rehgion  has  "  become  sub-con- 
scious once  more  "—why,  since  the  rehgious  spirit  is 
distinguished  from  the  rational  spirit  by  its  sub-conscious 
character,  may  we  not  trust  ourselves  in  the  hands  of 
such  sub-conscious  reUgion,  and  have  done  with  the 
teaching  of  the  catechism?    And,  of  course,  that  is 
exactly  what  Mr  Crawley  is  driving  at ;  for  has  he  not 


52 


Vital  Lies 


Ji 


i 


?? 


explicitly  said  (p.  312),  "  True  religion  cannot  live  and 
cannot  be  understood  for  what  it  is,  unless  its  forms  are 
constantly  changing.'' 

True  religion,  we  now  know,  is  sub-conscious  religion  ; 
and  how  obvious  (now  that  Mr  Crawley  has  drawn 
attention  to  it)  that  those  doctrines  imported  into 
sub-conscious  religion  by  the  historical  rationalism  of 
the    Hebrews    (with    all    their    boring    chronological 
literature)  and  the  metaphysical  rationaUsm  of  decadent 
Greece,  should  be  a  mere  changing  form,  and  the  sooner 
changed  away  altogether  the  better.    Also  as  long  as 
all  that  dogma  is  beUeved  in,  true  rehgion  cannot  (as 
Mr  Crawley  wishes  it)  "  be  understood  for  what  it  is,'' 
Since  how  can  a  man  who  beheves  the  Creed  under- 
stand that  true  rehgion  has  nothing  really  to  do  with 
God  the  Father,  or  the  Virgin  Mary,  or  Pontius  Pilate, 
or  even  with  (p.  266)  "  morality  and  altruism  "  taught 
in   those  historical  fabrications  the   Gospels,   but  is 
concerned  only  with  the  Integrity  of  the  Elemental 
View  of  Life  and  the  Intactness  of  the  Springs  of  Exist- 
ence;   and  is  founded  not  upon  a  most  partial  and 
local  revelation,   but  upon   the   universally   existing 
elemental  view  of  hfe  of  prehistoric  man  ? 

Did  I  not  always  think  that  Mr  Crawley  and  I,  being 
both  of  us  on  the  subjective  plane,  and  only  (strictly) 
sub-consdously  rehgious,  must,  despite  apparent  differ- 
ences, arrive  at  the  same  conclusions? 

But,  behold  how  Uttle  one  should   trust  to    the 


Anthropological  Apologetics  53 

rational  principle  even  in  discussing  the  uses  of  the 
irrational !  All  this  is  precisely  what  Mr  Crawley  does 
not  mean,  either  consciously  or  sub-consciously.  Those 
cases  where  religion  has  once  more  become  suh-conscious 
and  given  rise  sub-consciously  to  the  personal  rules  of 
honour  and  decency,  duty,  commercicd  and  social,  and  a 
few  other  items,  are  merely  exceptional ;  they  refer 
only  to  people  like  you  and  me,  thinking  and  wiUing 
subjects,  not  thought  of  or  willed  about  objects.  The 
Objects  meanwhile,  the  people  whom  we  are  talking 
about  but  on  no  account  talking  to,  and  who  (being  hke 
all  objects,  determined  and  with  no  will  in  the  matter) 
must  on  no  account  be  left  alone  with  a  rehgion  "  become 
once  more  suh-conscious,'^  nor  can  their  sub-conscious- 
ness be  trusted  to  send  up  (as  ours  does,  and  that  of 
primitive  savages  did)  sub-consciously,  principles  in 
support  of  honour  and  decency,  duty,  commercial  and 
social,  etc.,  .  .  .  They,  unhke  us,  are  in  danger  of 
losing  their  Elemental  View  of  Life,  and  Mr  Crawley 
tells  us  from  what  causes  (p.  318) :  "  in  the  first  place, 
the  neglect  of  the  principles  of  heredity  "  (the  context 
shows  that  Mr  Crawley  does  not  refer  to  the  principles 
of  Mr  Bateson,  Mr  Saleeby,  or  the  Laboratory  for 
Eugenics,  but  rather  to  the  principles  of  the  Primrose 
League),  "  and  the  encouragement  of  such  practices  ^  as 

*  There  ia  no  indication  of  Mr  Crawley  meaning  the  practice  of 
drinking^beer^and 'spirits,  encouraged  on  the  contrary  by  the  present 
incarnations  of^the  Principle  of  Heredity. 


54 


Vital  Lies 


produce  nervous  degeneration  ;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
the  realization  of  abstract  theories  like  Socialism.'* 


xn 

These   Objects    we    are    speaking  about,    but  not 
speaking  to— shall  we  call  these  Objects  briefly  the 
lower  classes  ?— are,  in  fact,  in  terrible  danger  (their 
Elemental  View  of  Life,  that  precious  heritage  from 
Bull  Roaring  days  jeopardized)  from  SociaHsm.     For, 
as  Mr  Crawley  explains  (p.  279),  Socialistic  proposals 
make  for  "  not  real  development,  nor  even  equalization 
of  oppoHunity,  nor  the  bringing  down  of  the  weak  from 
the  high  places  and  the  raising  of  the  strong  from  the 
dust,  but  an  unfair  bestouxil  upon  the  weak  of  larger 
rewards  than  they  deserved    And  (p.  276)  he  adds  "  it 
was  no  Socialist  who  died  upon  the  Cross,"  a   solid 
historical  fact  extremely  valuable  after  Mr  Crawley's 
masterly  recapitulation  of  all  the  conflicting  hypotheses 
of  his  fellow-anthropologists  and  mythologists  as  to 
whether  any  person  did  die  upon  that  particular  cross, 
which  cross  was  itself  a  derivation  from  some  primseval 
mythical  Tree  of  Life.  .  .  . 

But  even  at  the  end  of  this,  my  puzzled  attempt  to 
follow  Mr  Crawley's  conscious  or  sub-conscious 
principles,  I  find  myself  once  more  in  uncertainty 
about  his  real  meaning.     All  those  early  chapters  on 


Anthropological  Apologetics  55 

the  various  scientific  attacks  upon  the  truths  of 
Christianity,  all  that  masterly  exposition  of  the  theories 
and  hypotheses  of  Higher  Criticism,  of  History,  of 
Mythology  and  Anthropology — can  they,  is  it  possible 
that  they  should,  be  intended  by  Mr  Crawley  to 
demonstrate  that  the  orthodox  doctrines  are  true, 
and  that  this  array  of  science  is  all  nonsense  ?  For 
what  should  I  find  on  page  310  but  the  following 
statement : — 

"  The  bitter  attack  upon  religion  and  Christianity, 
some  arguments  of  which  we  have  surveyed,  is  chiefly  the 
work  of  a  socialistic  party  exploiting  the  daims  of  the 
lower  classes.  .  .  .  The  object  is  to  discredit  the  national 
religion  as  the  abode  of  privilege,  and  the  clergy  as  its 
depositaries  and  representatives.** 

Chiefly  the  work  of  Socialists !  Think  of  that ! 
Strauss  and  Colenso,  Tylor  and  Frazer,  and  all  those 
scholarly  persons  for  whom  these  names  may  stand, 
were  in  reality  but  the  representatives  or  the  tools  of 
Socialistic  agitators ! 

These  revelations  of  the  subconscious  activities  lurk- 
ing in  scientific  consciousness  are  positively  stagger- 
ing. And  as  I  reel  under  this  great  discovery  there 
recurs,  bell-like,  the  question  :  And  the  Tree  of  Life  ? 
And  the  Mystic  Rose,  and  all  about  Taboo,  and  the 
Elemental  View  of  Life,  and  the  Bull  Roarer — ^is  all 
that  a  trick  which  the  Socialists  have  been  playing 
(representing    no    doubt    the    rationalistic    principle) 


56 


Vital  Lies 


upon     Mr    Crawley's    own    subconscious    belief    in 
Christianity  ? 

No.     Mr  Crawley's  thought  is  not  self-contradictory, 
and  his  consciousness  and  his  sub-consciousness  are 
in  perfect  agreement.     The  whole  matter  hinges  upon 
the  difference  of  those  two  planes  so  dear  to  obscurantist 
philosophy,  the  plane  of  Free  Will  and  the  Plane  of 
Scientific  Thought ;    the  Plane  of  the  Subject  who  is 
doing  the  thinking  and  the  Plane  of  the  Object  who 
is  being  thought  about;    in   metaphysical   terms  it 
hinges  upon  the  eternal  (and  Obscurantism  likes  things 
to  be  eternal)  difference  between  We  and  They.     We, 
Mr    Crawley,   you   the   Reader  and   I,  who   are   dis- 
cussing  the  matter,  are   free    to   believe   in    Higher 
Criticism,  Anthropological   Mythology  and  Evolution 
which  (p.  322)  "  has  so  to  say,  brought  the  necessary 
elements  into  their  proper  places,  the  motive  forces  of 
which  we  have  attempted  to  describe  " ;    to  beUeve  also 
in  the  Elemental  View  of  Life  and  the  close  aflinity 
of  the  rehgious  and  the  sexual  instincts ;    in  the  de- 
rivation of  moraUty  from  taboos  and  the  derivation 
of  the  Eucharist  from  the  eating  of  the  "flesh  of  a 
strong  man  or  divine  person  " ;    in  short  we  are  free 
to  beUeve  in  the  theories  expounded  in  the  Tree  of 
Life.    But  they,  who  are  not  Mr  Crawley,  nor  you, 
nor  I,  nor  perhaps  anyone  with  whom  we  should  care  to 
discuss    these    subjects — they  who  are  likely  to  lose 
respect   for    the    national  religion,  they  who  cannot 


Anthropological  Apologetics  57 

spontaneously  appreciate  the  remarkable  fact  (p.  322) 
**  that  the  traditional  Christian  ideal  of  the  organisation 
of  the  Universe  is  so  closely  parallel,  both  socially  and 
politically,  if  the  phrase  may  be  itsed,  to  ow  own  "  (viz., 
that  of  the  British  Empire  ;  ^  they  whose  "  claims  " 
are  Uable  to  "  exploitation  by  a  Socialist  Party  " — 
They  had  better  be  left  to  the  "  instinct " — "  behind 
which  "  (p.  296)  "  there  is  sound  human  nature,  which 
leads  men  to  distrust  an  atheist. ^^ 

In  fact,  the  perusal  of  the  Tree  of  Life  is  to  persuade 
Us  that  They  had  better  not  peruse  that  book,  but 
stick  to  the  Bible  and  the  catechism.  "  For,^'  says  Mr 
Crawley  (p.  279  et  seq.),  "  a  broad  survey  of  human  history 
and  an  insight  into  human  possibilities  might  enable  us  to 
maintain  .  .  .  that  such  a  use  of  such  a  means  of  control  as 
religion  is  entirely  right  and  furthers  the  best  interests 
of  the  race.  For  the  weaker  and  less  successful  members 
of  any  community  are  apt  to  attribute  their  grievances 
to  the  present  social  system  whereas  they  are  due  to  the 
laws  of  evolution  and  the  inevitable  working  of  natural 
selection." 

Such  a  separation  of  the  planes  of  the  Subject  and  the 

^  The  original  arrangement  of  sentences  is  as  follows  :  "  The  wear 
and  tear  of  evolution  has,  so  to  say,  brought  the  necessary  elements  into 
their  proper  'places  by  a  natural  process,  the  motive  forces  of  which  toe 
have  attempted  to  describe.  Even  in  the  political  evolution  of  the 
British  Empire  this  may  be  seen.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  and  more 
than  a  coincidence  that  the  traditional  Christian  ideal  of  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Universe  is  so  closely  parallel  both  socially  and  politically, 
if  the  phrase  may  be  used,  to  our  oum." 


h 


58 


Vital  Lies 


Object,  of  the  We  and  the  T%,  although  (perhaps 
because  !)  the  highest  achievement  of  apologetic  meta- 
physics is  akeady  adumbrated  in  the  suhconsdousness 
of  peoples  still  undisturbed  in  their  Elemental  View  of 
Life  :  For  in  the  Tree  of  Life  (p.  144  et8eq.)m  Crawley 
tells  us,  on  the  authority  of  Messrs  Spencer  and  Gillen, 
that  among  the  Northern  Tribes  of  Austraha  the  young 
man  who  has  been  "  initiated  "  is  taught  by  the  elders 
that  the  Bull  Roarer  is  a  musical  instrument  just  like 
any  other,  and  "that  the  spirit  creature  whom  up  to 
that  time  he  has  regarded  as  all-powerful  is  merely  a 
myth,  and  that  such  a  being  does  not  really  exist,  and  is 
only  an  invention  of  the  men  to  frighten  the  women  and 
children.'''* 

So  let  this  be  the  last  but  not  least  lesson  of  com- 
parative mythology  and  its  sacred  Bull  Roarer  ! 


XIII 

But  stay  !  there  remains  another  one,  although  this 
lesson  is  not  the  one  intended  by  the  candid  mytho- 
logist  who  has  been  guiding  us  among  the  Vital 
lies  of  Primitive  Peoples.  And  this  last  lesson  I 
will  present  as  a  parable. 

Ethnographers  tell  us  of  the  fasts  and  vigils  and 
mortifications  of  all  kinds,  varying  from  enforced 
chastity  to  the  elaborate  wounding  and  hacking  of 


Anthropological  Apologetics  59 

their  own  body,  with  which  certain  savage  tribes  induce 
the  spirits  to  favour  their  bear-stalking.  And  it  is 
added  that  these  mistaken  practices  have  fostered  habits 
of  self-restraint,  endurance,  discipHne  and  heroism, 
which  those  savages  might  otherwise  have  lacked. 
Moreover,  when  these  practices  included  ritual  dances 
and  music  and  ornament,  they  have  also  conduced  to 
sesthetic  development.  In  fact,  the  only  good  effect 
these  practices  did  not  have  was  their  intended  one 
upon  the  bears ! 

Now,  I  will  readily  admit  that  these  great  moral 
results  may  be  obtainable  in  no  other  way  from  savage 
persons  with  thoughts  entirely  bent  upon  the  killing 
of  bears.  But,  given  that  we  have  recognised  the 
desirability  of  self-restraint,  chastity,  heroism  and  art 
for  other  purposes  than  that,  might  we  not  be  trusted 
to  take  about  these  spiritual  gifts  a  Httle  of  the  trouble 
which  the  savages  took  about  their  bears  ?  Or  must 
we  keep  up  not  only  mistaken  views  about  bears,  but 
an  artificial  archaicizing  interest  in  these  animals  ? 


XIV 

Already  nearly  a  century  ago,  the  Bridgewater 
Treatises  showed  that  rehgion  was  no  longer  a  matter 
of  assent  (in  Newman's  phrase)  but  already  a  matter 
of  inference.      There  must  be  a  God,  they  argued, 


!      t 
<      ! 


ll 


6o 


Vital  Lies 


because  what  could  be  better  made  to  grasp  than  the 
human  hand,  to  see  than  the  human  eye,  to  smell  than 
the  human  nose  ? 

More  recent  investigation  has  shown  that  there  could 
quite  w<3ll  have  been  something  better  if  grasping, 
seeing,  smeUing,  etc.,  had  been  the  original  purpose  of 
an  all-powerful  creator.     Indeed  we  have  been  taught 
that  what  is  called  grasping,  seeing  and  smelling  has 
resulted  from  the  possibihties  of  the  hand,  eyes  and 
nose  rather  than  these  organs  being  devised  for  such 
purposes.     Be  this  as  it  may— (and  Bergson  and  others 
are  beginning  to  tell  us  that  the  eye  may  have  been 
the  expression  of  the  bUnd  beast's  will  to  see  rather 
than  of  the  bhnd  Cosmos'  will  to  nothing  in  particular) 
—be   this   as  it   may,  the  Bridgewater  argument  is 
a  weapon  dangerous  to  the  user  when  inverted  by 
reUgious  apologists  :   For  you  may  persuade  people  of 
the  existence  of  God  by  showing  how  very  well  (or 
how  indifferently  well)  an  eye  is  suited  to  see,  or  a  hand 
to  grasp.     But  to  show  the  extreme  suitableness  to 
human  requirements  of  a  behef  in  God  is,  somehow, 
scarcely  the  way  to  persuade  people  of  God's  real  and 
independent   existence.     It   was,   after   all,    Voltaire, 
and  not  St  Augustine  or  St  Thomas  Aquinas  who  made 
the  cogent  remark,  "  Si  Dieu  n'existait  pas,  il  faudrait 
Tin  venter." 


I 


C5HAPTER  III 

M.  SOREL  AND  THE  "SYNDICALIST 
MYTH"  OF  THE  GENERAL  STRIKE 

V'i  in  questo  scopo  qualche  cosa  di  rdigioso  e  di  cristiano  :  VatteM, 
di  un  mondo  nuovo,  che  non  verra  se  non  attraverao  i  martirii. — 
Prezzolini,  "  La  Teoria  Sindacalista,"  p.  115. 


SPEAKING  of  Professor  James  and  Doctor 
Schiller,  I  remarked  that  it  takes  bolder  men 
than  they  to  call  mistakes  mistakes,  lies  lies,  and 
yet  assert  that  both  may  have  usefubiess  and  goodness 
and  value  fully  as  much  as  truth,  and  even  occasionally 
more.  The  bolder  man,  the  ultra-pragmatist,  has 
actually  appeared  ;  not  indeed  among  us  "  practical  " 
Anglo-Saxons,  but  among  those  French  folk  who  are 
never  afraid  (for  M.  Bergson  is  a  half  English  Jew) 
of  pushing  intellectual  formulae  to  their  utmost 
consequences. 

A  Frenchman,  M.  (xeorges  Sorel,  has,  to  use  Nietzsche's 
phrase,  re-valued  our  valuation  not  of  truth,  but  of 
falsehood ;  he  has  ceased  to  call  the  useful,  efficacious 
untruth  [the  vital  he]  truth,  tnUh-in-so-far-forth,  truth 

61 


\ 


* 


62 


Vital  Lies 


in  80  far  as  good  for,  etc.  He  has  called  it,  when 
supremely  efficacious,  "the  myth";  and  he  has 
insisted  that  the  myth  is  potent  for  good  just  in  pro- 
portion as  it  disdains  to  be  a  partial  truth.  He  has 
not  used  pragmatism  as  a  convenience,  pragmatically 
hesitating  between  yes  and  no,  but,  Hke  a  thorough 
behever,  a  genuine  apostle,  he  has  carried  his  doctrine 
to  its  own  glorious  logical  death. 

Mysteriously  impelled,  one  might  say  (as  the  apostles 
were  impelled  to  forsake  Jesus  "in  order  that  the 
scriptures  should  be  fulfilled  "),  to  give  the  reductio 
ad  absurdum  of  his  own  doctrines,  he  has  actually 
pubUshed  in  the  chief  Syndicalist  paper,  and  cheek 
by  jowl  with  furious  preachings  of  the  General  Strike^ 
a  series  of  essays  setting  forth  that  the  General  Strike 
must  be  preached  because  it  is  an  unreaKzable  myth, 
and  because  only  unrealizable  mjtha  can  beget  un- 
hesitating behef  and  wholesale  action. 


n 

"Nous  vivons  de  I'ombre  d'une  ombre.  De  quol  vivra-t-on 
apr^  nous  ?  " 

So  wrote  Renan,  repeating  the  very  same  words  in 
two  separate  contexts.  Monsieur  Sorel  has  been  not 
only  a  student  of  those  historical  and  psychological 
"  origins  "  of  Christianity  which  took  up  so  much  of 


The  Syndicalist  Myth       63 

Kenan's  activity ;  he  has  been  a  student  of  Renan 
himself,  and  in  quoting  that  famous  passage  he  is 
giving  us  the  genealogy  and  also  the  premiss  of  his  own 
theory  of  the  Syndicalist  Myth. 

The  "  Ombre  d'une  Ombre  "  occurs,  as  I  have  said, 
twice  in  M.  Kenan's  works.  Let  me  put  together  the 
two  contexts  which  happen  to  complete  each  other. 
In  the  Preface  to  FeuUles  DMch^es  we  read  :  "  Nous 
pouvons  nous  passer  de  religion  parceque  d^atUres  en  ont 
eu  pour  nous.  Ceux  qui  ne  croient  pas  sont  entrain6s  par 
la  masse  plus  ou  moins  croyante ;  mais  le  jour  ou  la 
masse  n'aurait  plus  d'elan,  les  braves  eux-memes  iraient 
mollement  a  Vassaut.  Ou  tirera  heaucoup  moins  d'une 
humanity  ne  croyant  pas  d  Vimmortalit4  de  Vdme  que 
.dune  humanity  y  croyant. 

"  Les  personnes  rdigieuses  viverU  d^une  ombre.  Nous 
vivons  de  Vombre  d'une  ombre.  De  quoi  vivra-t-on  apr^ 
nous?  .  .  . 

"  Ne  d^esperous  pas  sur  la  dose  ni  sur  la  formule 
de  la  religion  ;  bomons-nous  d  ne  pas  la  nier,  gardens 
la  oatigorie  de  Vinconnu,  la  possibility  de  river.  II  ne 
faut  pas  que  la  ruine  devenue  inevitable  des  religious 
prMendu£s  riviUes,  entraine  la  disparition  du  senti- 
ment rdigieux." 

Here  we  have  the  assertion  that  religious  behef  is 
necessary  for  the  thorough  and  sufficient  output  of 
mihtant  moral  energy :  "  on  tirera  beaucoup  moins 
dur^  humanity  ne  croyant  pas  d  Vimmortaliti  de  Vdme 


: 


■ 


64 


Vital  Lies 


I 


m 


que  d'une  humanity  y  cfoyant"  Then  we  are  told  that 
what  religious  people  live  off  is  an  unreality — "  lea 
personnes  rdigieuses  vivent  d'une  ombre.*^  Remark 
that  it  is  the  religious  beUevers  Renan  is  speaking  of ; 
not  us  who  no  longer  believe  and  who  are  described 
as  hving  only  on  the  shadow  of  the  shadow,  while  the 
shadow  itself  is  kept  for  the  true  beUevers.  And 
thirdly,  after  asking  "  dequoi  vivra-t-on  apr^s  nous  ?  " 
M.  Renan  tells  us  that  we  must  not  allow  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  reUgious  doctrines  hitherto  taught  to  de- 
prive us  of  this  necessary  reUgious  spirit.  And  again 
he  repeats  that  reUgious  beUef  is  of  the  nature  of  a 
shadow,  admonishing  us  to  keep  "  la  catSgorie  de 
Vinconnu,  la  possibility  de  reverb  Then,  in  the  Preface 
of  the  "  Dialogues  Philosophiques,"  we  again  get — 
*'Nous  vivons  de  V ombre  d'une  ombre.  De  quoi  vivra-t-on 
apris  nous  ?  "  but  with  the  immediate  addition  :  "  une 
seide  chose  est  silre;  c'est  que  Vhumanite  tirera  de  son 
sein  tout  ce  qui  est  n^cessaire  en  fait  d'illusions  pour 
qu^elle  remplisse  ses  devoirs  et  accomplisse  sa  destin^e. 
Ell  n'y  pas  failli  jusqu'id ;  die  n^y  faiUira  pas  dans 
Vavenir" 

Now  let  us  come  to  M.  Georges  Sorel.  Mankind, 
he  tells  us,  being  always  in  need  of  such  illusions — 
shadows  of  shadows — fertile  in  virtue  and  heroism,  has 
perpetually  made  and  remade  them  in  the  past,  and  it 
is  busy  at  the  same  work  in  the  present.  To  the  great 
historical  myths  like  that  of  early  Messianic  Christianity 


I 
I 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      65 

and  the  Humanitarianism  of  the  French  Revolution 
is  now  being  added,  to  renew  the  world's  needful  ideals 
and  miUtant  moraUty,  the  SyndicaUst  Myth  of  the 
General  Strike. 


ra 

Before  expounding  the  theory  of  the  Syndicalist 
Myth,  it  will  be  necessary  to  explain  or  recall  to  my 
EngUsh  reader  the  nature  of  the  very  un-EngUsh  form 
of  SociaUsm  which  takes  its  name  in  Latin  countries 
from  the  Syndicates,  or,  as  we  should  call  them.  Trade 
Unions.  I  have  brought  in  this  word  trade  unions 
in  order  to  forestall  the  reader's  natural  tendency  to 
imagine  that  Syndicalism  and  Trade  Unionism  are  the 
same.  They  are  absolutely  different,*  as  M.  Sorel 
and  his  ItaUan  exponent,  Signor  PrezzoUni,  repeatedly 
insist ;  indeed,  the  best  way  of  understanding  the 
SyndicaUsm  of  Latin  countries  is  to  oppose  it  to  British 
Trade  Unionism.  For  the  British  Trade  Union  is  a 
corporate  body  within  the  State,  employing  its  special 
corporate  action  for  special  corporate  purposes,  that  is 

^  "  Que  la  grSve  ginirale  ne  soil  pas  popvlaire  dans  VAngleterre 
contemporaine,  c'est  un  pauvre  argument  a  faire  valoir  contre  la  porOe 
historique  de  Vidie,  car  les  Anglais  se  distingv^nt  par  une  extraordinaire 
incomprehension  de  la  lutte  de  classe . .  .la  corporation,  privilegiie 
ou  protigie  au  mains  par  les  lots,  leur  apparatt  toujour s  comme  Vidial 
de  Vorganisation  ouvriere.  C'est  pour  VAngleterre  que  Von  a  invenU 
le  terme  d' aristocratic  ouvriere  pour  parler  des  syndiquis  "  (Sorel : 
"  Reflexions  sui  la  Violence,"  p.  90). 

2e 


66 


Vital  Lies 


n' 


'M 


to  say,  in  corporate  bargains  with  employers  ;  and  its 
members,  besides  being  members  of  the  union,  are  also 
parts  of  other  collectivities,  members  of  a  church,  a 
township,  or  a  pohtical  party ;    above  all,  citizens  of 
a  State  employing  their  civic  powers,  municipal  and 
parUamentary  votes,  like  any  other  citizens.     On  the 
contrary  the  member  of  a  Latin  Syndicate  (at  least, 
of  a  thorough-paced  Syndicalist  Syndicate)  is,  or  wishes 
to  be,  nothing  but  a  member  of  that  Syndicate,  and 
through  it  only  of    whatever   confederacy  of  similar 
Syndicates  may  have  been  formed  in  or  outside  his 
country.    In  or  outside  his  country,  but  not  recog- 
nised as  in  or  outside  of  it ;  for  the  Syndicahst  recognises 
only  his  Syndicate  and  confederacy  of  Syndicates, 
and  the  Nation,  the  State,  does  not  exist  for  him :  he 
pays  the  taxes,  obeys  the  laws,  serves  in  the  armies 
of  this  country  or  that,  but  only  as  a  matter  of  com- 
pulsion, and  denying  all  its  claims.   Seen  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  State  or  Nation,  he  is  an  Anarchist  (the 
cosmopohtan   SyndicaUsts   of   Chicago  seem   to   call 
themselves  by  that  name) ;  ^  seen  from  inside  his  own 
Syndicate,  he  is  a  completely  unindividuaUstic  part 
of  a  collectivity ;    even    as  the  primitive  Christian, 
absolutely  submissive  to  his  church,  was  a  rebel  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Roman  official.     But  the  SjTidicaUst 
proletariat  is  not  a  new  State  within  an  old  State  which 
it  disregards  ;  it  is  a  new  State  erecting  itself  in  oppo- 
*  Cf.  Haj^ood'a  moat  Interesting  "  The  Spirit  of  Labour." 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      67 

sition  to  an  old  State  which  it  intends  to  destroy  and 
absorb. 

And  to  destroy  and  absorb  without  employing  any 
of  the  means  furnished  by  that  old  State — any  means, 
in  fact,  except  its  own.  Herein  Hes  the  pecuHarity 
of  SyndicaKsm,  its  superficial  resemblance  to  Anarchism, 
and  its  essential  difference  from  all  other  forms  of 
Sociahsm  :  it  rejects,  not  only  all  theories  of  compromise 
and  evolution,  but  aU  employment  of  pohtical  and 
municipal  machinery.  This  distinctive  characteristic 
of  S3aidicaUsm  becomes  easier  to  grasp  when  we  remark 
that  it  exists  principally  in  countries  which,  having 
long  possessed  a  well-organised  State-sociahst  party, 
have  actually  seen  SociaUsts,  if  not  Sociahsm,  in 
power,  and  have  seen,  therefore,  that,  once  in  power, 
once  installed  in  municipahties  or  parHaments,  or  even 
in  cabinets,  they  have  failed  to  carry  out  the  wholesale 
promises  made  to  electors.  This  inabihty,  doubtless 
often  turning  to  unwiUingness,  has  discredited  parha- 
mentary  Sociahsm  in  the  eyes  of  the  proletariat,  let 
alone  in  those  of  rival  and  unofficial  demagogues ; 
and  the  very  compromises  and  concessions  of  the 
bourgeoisie  have  been  interpreted  as  attempts  to  cor- 
rupt, to  enervate,  and  hoodwink  Sociahsm.  Hence 
the  attitude  of  the  Syndicahst  proletariat,  or  rather 
of  course,  of  the  leaders,  organisers,  and  theorisers 
of  Syndicahsm  :  they  will  not  hear  of  Fabians,  of 
sympathising  bourgeois,  of  intellectuals,  of  members  of 


J 


*l 


mi 


J!: 


f  i 

t  '     i 


il    i 


68 


Vital  Lies 


municipalities  and  parliaments.  Moreover,  the  pro- 
letariat recognises  no  bonds  and  no  differences  of 
nationality ;  no  duty  towards  the  State  (SyndicaUsts  are 
logically  anti-militarists),  as  it  accepts  no  advantages 
from  the  State.  It  refuses  to  employ  the  mechanism 
of  capitaUstic  society  even  against  itself ;  it  makes 
war  on  capitahsm  without  using  capitaUsm's  weapons. 
The  SyndicaUst  proletariat  is  to  conquer  and  suppress 
and  replace  the  capitalistic  State  by  systematic  ab- 
stention and  opposition  ;  and  its  means  of  doing  so  are 
inherent  in  the  Syndicate  constitution  and  in  the 
fact  of  the  labourers  being  labourers.  Labour  is  going 
to  besiege  and  starve  out  Capitahsm.  And  the  battles 
which  must  be  fought  in  the  great  class  warfare  are 
what  we  call  strikes. 

These  strikes  may  be  ostensibly  to  gain  this 
momentary  concession  or  that,  even  as  a  skirmish  or 
a  siege  in  other  wars  may  aim  directly  at  securing 
a  position  of  vantage  or  seizing  stores  or  capturing  a 
hostile  troop ;  but  their  true  importance,  and  the 
reason  for  sacrificing  to  them  all  individual  motives, 
will  depend  upon  their  leading  to  a  final,  a  distant,  an 
indefinable,  Armageddon  called  the  Greneral  Strike. 

Thus  has  arisen,  partly  from  Marxian  and  Anarchist 
theorisings,  and  partly  from  the  practical  conflict  of 
Labour  with  Capital,  a  feehng  of  class  warfare,  an 
expectation  of  the  day  of  hberation,  retribution,  and 
triumph,  of  a  coming  of  the  working  man's  kingdom 


iA 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      69 

of  heaven  on  earth.  We  have  all  read  some  of  the 
hterature  of  Catastrophic  SociaUsm,  from  Morris's 
"  News  from  Nowhere  "  to  Kropotkin's  "  Conquest  of 
Bread,"  and  we  all  know  that  ideas  such  as  these  have 
been  pubhshed  in  thousands  of  pamphlets  and  journals, 
and  preached  in  milUons  of  meetings  and  clubs,  for 
the  last  half-century  and  more.  Moreover,  we  have 
learned  from  Zola,  and  from  the  far  more  romantic 
"  human  documents "  of  sociological  students  of 
proletarian  Ufe  on  the  Continent  and  in  America,  that 
with  the  habit  of  strike,  with  the  thought  of  class-war- 
fare, and  the  expectation  of  a  Sociahstic  or  Anarchistic 
catastrophe,  there  has  grown  up  among  the  working 
classes  something  amounting  to  a  new  religion  and  a 
new  kind  of  altruistic  ethic,  whose  watchword  is 
**  sohdarity,"  and  whose  first,  and  occasionally  sole, 
commandment  is,  "  Thou  shalt  not  be  a  blackleg."  ^ 

When  will  the  general  strike  be  brought  about,  with 
its  destruction  of  the  capitahstic  regime  and  its  kingdom 
of  proletarian  righteousness  ?  How  soon  ?  Where  ? 
In  what  way  ?  Perhaps  in  a  remote  future,  perhaps  in 
a  Uving  man's  Hfetime,  perhaps  to-morrow,  perhaps 
.  .  .  ?  But  everyone  feels  that  come  it  must,  and  that 
only  by  renouncing  all  other  desires,  by  sacrificing  all 
individual  superiorities  and  advantages,  by  postponing 
wife  and  child  to  the  Union  and  the  Cause,  by  lenience 
to  all  the  weaknesses  and  vice  of  faithful  comrades,  by 

»  Cf.  Hapgood,  '^  The  Spirit  of  Labour." 


Ma 


70 


Vital  Lies 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      71 


f 


ruthlessness  to  all  dissidents  and  strike-breakers,  by 
refusal  of  all  compromise  with  capitalistic  society  and 
its  institutions — in  fact,  only  by  the  unanimous  girding 
up  of  loins,  the  watching  and  praying  and  preaching 
of  the  working  man,  can  class  warfare  be  kept  up  and 
the  General  Strike  brought  about. 

All  this  is  well  known  to  us  of  the  bourgeoisie^  known 
with  hatred  or  terror  or  sympathy  and  admiration ; 
known  also,  by  some  of  us,  in  its  pathos  and  grandeur, 
with  sadness  and  indignation  that  so  much  rehgion  and 
heroism  should  be  wasted  or  exploited. 

M.  Sorel,  who  is  not  a  workman,  but  a  retired  ofl&cial, 
and,  as  I  have  already  remarked,  a  philosophical  student 
of  Renan,  has  seen  it  all  with  other  eyes  : — 

'*  N0U8  savons,^^  he  writes  ("Reflexions  sur  la  Violence," 
p.  95),  **  nous  Savons  que  la  gr^ve  gent^rale  est  hien  ce  que 
fai  dit,  un  myihe  dans  lequel  le  sodalisme  s^exprime 
tout  entier,  une  organization  damages  capahles  d^^voquer 
instinctivement  tous  les  sentiments  qui  correspondent 
aux  diverses  manifestations  de  la  guerre  engage  par  le 
sodalisme  contre  la  socidU  modeme.  Les  grdves  ont 
engendre  dans  le  proletariat  les  sentiments  les  plus  nobles, 
les  ^lus  profonds  et  les  plus  moteurs  quHl  poss^de ;  la 
grive  gin^rale  les  groupe  tous  dans  un  tableau  d^ensetnble 
et,  par  leur  rapprochement,  donne  a  chacun  son  maximum 
dHrUensit^ ;  faisant  appel  h  des  souvenirs  tris  cuisants 
de  conflits  particuliers,  elle  colore  d'une  vie  intense  tous 
les  details  de  la  composition  presentee  a  la  conscience. 


I 


"  Notts  obtenons  ainsi  cette  intuition  du  socia^lisme 
que  le  langage  ne  pouvait  pas  nous  donner  d'une  rmini^re 
parfaitement  cLaire — et  nous  Vobtenons  dans  un  ensemble 
pergu  instantan^ment.^^  ^ 

Monsieur  Renan  had  wondered  out  of  what  illusions 
the  world  would  thenceforward  extract  its  virtues. 
*'  Nous  vivons  de  I'ombre  d'une  ombre,"  he  had  written 
in  that  much-quoted  passage,  "  de  quoi  vivra-t-on 
apres  nous  ?  "  Monsieur  Sorel  answers,  "  On  this  " 
— ^and  he  christens  it  (in  more  senses  than  one)  the 
SociaUst  Myth  of  the  General  Strike. 


IV 

Here  I  must  parenthesize  and  forestall  a  very  natural 
question :  Why  should  the  General  Strike  be  a  myth, 
and  not  a  coming  reaUty  ? 

In  the  first  place,  and  more  generally,  because  in  the 
multipUcity  of  historic  factors,  many  unguessed-of 
and  most  of  them  incalculable,  it  is  next  to  impossible 
that  anything  should  happen  as  it  is  foreseen,  and  still 
less  as  it  is  foreseen  by  multitudes  of  ignorant  and 
passionate  men. 

The  Syndicahst  idea  of  the  General  Strike  is 
essentially  opposed  to  all  the  hopes  of  *'  evolutional " 
SociaUsm  ;  it  excludes  the  co-operation  of  unintended 

1 "  Cest  la  connaiasance  parfaiie  de  la  phUosophie  Bergsonienne," 


72 


Vital  Lies 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      73 


!l( 


r 

il 


factors,  it  disdains  unexpected  improvements ;  it  is, 
for  all  its  vagueness,  a  programme,  and  history  teaches 
us  that  programmes  are  never  accomplished  except 
by  compromise  with  other  programmes ;  but  you  cannot 
imagine  the  martyrs  of  Nero's  persecution  going  to  the 
stake  either  on  the  understanding  that  Christianity 
should  absorb  Pagan  institutions,  or  in  the  vague  hope 
that,  given  the  condition  of  antique  civihzation, 
*'  something  was  sure  to  turn  up."  No  :  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  and  nothing  short  of  it,  had  to  come,  and  to 
come  through  the  very  sufferings  of  those  who  beheved 
in  it.  Similarly  with  the  hopes  embodied  in  the  notion 
of  a  catastrophic  end  of  the  capitalistic  regime. 

But  there  are  also  special  reasons  why  the  General 

Strike  can  never  be  more  than  a  myth.    It  must  remain 

a  myth  chiefly  because  (and  whatever  remains  obscure 

in  M.  Sorel's  text  is  thoroughly  cleared  up  by  his 

commentator,   Signor  Prezzohni)   the  General  Strike 

must  not  be  conceived  as  a  mere  revolution,  a  fine 

Bastille  day,  even  a  Reign  of  Terror,  after  which  things 

return  to  a  mitigated  status  quo.    It  is  not  even  a  mere 

dramatic  finale,  a  Gdtterddmmerung  of  the  bourgeois 

Olympus.    It  is  (hke  the  coming  of  Christ  and  the 

Judgment  of  the  Quick  and  the  Dead)  essentially  the 

beginning  of  a  new  regime;    that  is  to  say,  of  the 

absorption    of    all    the    achievements    of    capitaUstic 

civihzation   by   the   victorious   proletariat.    The   war 

of  classes  will  end  by  the  estabhshment  of  one  single 


class  of  syndicated  working  men.  Now  such  a  taking 
over  by  the  proletariat  of  the  complex  functions,  the 
enormous  economic  machinery  of  capitahsm  (not 
production  only,  but  credit  and  exchange),  would 
require  that  the  proletariat  should  akeady  have  risen 
to  the  level  of  the  "  directing  "  classes  ;  short  of  which 
the  defeated  bourgeoisie  would  return  to  power  in  the 
disguise  of  foremen  and  organizers,  or  a  new  aristocracy 
would  arise  out  of  the  proletariat  itself ;  or— what  would 
be  quite  as  bad — all  the  accumulated  wealth  of  the 
world  would  be  wasted  and  destroyed. 

"  In  other  words"  sums  up  Signor  Prezzohni,  "  once 
the  working  classes  are  able  to  carry  through  their  General 
Strike  they  will  no  longer  require  to  hive  it ;  but  they  must 
go  on  attempting  their  General  Strike  .  .  .  well,  as  long 
as  a  General  Strike  is  impossible  to  carry  through." 

"The  so-called  General  Strike"  continues  Signor. - 
Prezzohni  elsewhere,  "  can  therefore  never  be  general. 
Its  function  is  educational.  It  will  simply,  and  by 
grouping  them  together,  educate  the  majority  of  working 
men  to  mutual  knowledge  and  helpfulness,  teach  them  to  ^ 
free  themselves  from  all  tutelage,  to  reject  the  advances 
of  over-friendly  capitalism,  and  finally,  it  will  enable 
them  to  constitute,  by  their  various  associMions,  the 
rudiinentary  organs  of  a  new  social  organism. 

"  To  liberate  all  classes,  to  destroy  all  false  ideologies, 
to  unite  labour  with  the  faeidty  of  directing  it,  means  the 
production  of  a  new  human  being  :  and  this  new  mankind 


L 


\ 


74 


Vital  Lies 


I  il 


tfta 


I 


is  produced  by  the  wUl  of  Socialism,  or,- more  stridly 
speaking,  of  Syndicalism  "  (queU'  uomo  che  e  la  volizione 
del  Socialismo,  o  meglio  del  Sindacalismo). 

The  will  of  Sijndimlism,  but  not  necessarily  the  will 
of  one,  or  many,  or  all,  or  any  of  the  syndicalized 
proletarians.  It  is  not  they,  paying  their  wages  into 
union  funds  and  starving  in  strikes  and  out-locks,  who 
want  the  "  new  human  being  "—spoken  of  by  Signor 
PrezzoUni.  The  wUl  of  Syndicalism  \b  .  .  .  well,  first 
and  foremost,  it  is  the  will  which  SyndicaUsts,  those 
who  reaUy  beUeve  in  the  General  Strike,  happen  not 
to  have.  This  will  is  the  name  for  a  tendency  which 
philosophers  find  in  certain  historical  events,  a  tendency 
which  is  a  mere  abstract  generahzation  from  what  has 
actually  happened  (or,  in  the  case  of  Syndicahsm,  can 
happen),  and  which  these  philosophers  Uke  to  con- 
template, to  personify,  and  (being,  indeed,  only  in 
their  own  consciousness)  to  project,  as  a  sort  of 
mjrstic  will,  into  the  unconscious  depths  of  .  .  .  one 
scarcely  knows  whether  individuals  or  the  race— but, 
at  all  events,  of  people  conscious  only  of  something 
quite  different. 

When  philosophers  of  this  kind  speak  of  the  will 
of,  say,  Syndicahsm,  the  only  certainty  is  that  they 
are  talking  of  what  they  will  to  think  abotU  :  for  philo- 
sophers love  to  ascend  to  the  high  places,  whence  nations 
and  centuries  are  seen  in  tidy  fore-shortening  and 
colour  patterns,  totally  unUke  what  any  real  thing 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      75 


could  ever  be  ;  high  places  where  they  interrogate  the 
titanic   abstractions  "  World- will  "  and  "  Race-will " 
—and  now  "  Proletarian- will  "—whom  they  have  made 
out  of  their  own  brain  fumes,  their  own  burnt  pinch 
of  historical  mummy-dust,  and  with  whom  they  feel, 
as  they  truly  are,  in  company  worthy  of  themselves. 
It  is  these  "  wills  "  who,  taking  over  the  business  of 
the  departed  gods— it  is  these  wills,  particularly  the 
historical  ones,  which,  so  to  speak,  will  the  myths ; 
that  is  to  say,  will  that  an  enormous  lot  of  people,  say 
the  whole  Syndicahst  proletariat,  should  strive  and 
struggle  to  attain  something  which  it  does  not  intend, 
under  the  impression  that  it  is  struggling  for  something 
which  it  does  intend.   .  .   .  Since  that,  when  all  is  said 
and  done,  is  what  Monsieur  Sorel  means  in  talking  of 
the  Syndicahst  Myth. 


(Parenthetical  and  Margitial) 

Since  Monsieur  Sorel  is  always  adjuring  us  to  look 
at  things  from  the  "  historic  standpoint,"  I  may  as  well 
remark  that  Monsieur  Sorel's  myth  theory  is  itself 
historically  exphcable  as  a  violent  reaction  from  the 
theories  of  so-called  "  Historic  MateriaUsm  "  for  which 
Marx  and  other  SociaUsts  (Uke  Loria)  are  so  largely 
responsible.    The  philosophic,  Uke  the  artistic,  mind 


w1 


76 


Vital  Lies 


The  Syndicalist  Myth rj 


m 


I 


is  very  easily  bored  with  any  dominant  fashion.) 
SociaUsts  had  hitherto  explained  everything  by  mere 
economic  pressure  and  practical  interests  ;  the  natural 
revulsion  has  been  that  the  world's  changes  are  now 
explained  by  '*  ideas  "—and  "  ideals  "—and,  to  be  more 
unpractical  still,  by  myths.  Formerly,  to  use  a  homely 
simile,  dreams  were  explained  as  dependent  upon  the 
state  of  the  digestion  ;  now,  the  digestion  is  explained 
to  depend  upon  mental  causes.    And  thus  ad  libitum. 


And  now  let  us  hear  Monsieur  Sorel  expound  his  own 
theory  of  the  efficacy  of  myths  : — 

"  Vexperience  nous  prouve  que  des  constructions  cTun 
avenir  indSermin^  dans  le  temps   peuvent  avoir  une 
grande  efficacit^  et  n'avoir  que  bien  peu  dHnconv^ients 
lorsqu'dles   sont   d'une   certaine   nature;    cda   a   lieu 
quand  il  s'agit  de  mythes  dans  lesquels  se  retrouvent 
les  tendances  les  plus  fortes  d'un  peuple,  d'un  parti, 
ou  d'une  dasse,  tendances  qui  viennent  a  se  presenter 
d  VesprU  avec  Vinsistance  d'instincts  dans  toutes  les 
circonstances  de  U  vie,  et  qui  donnent  un  aspect  de  pleine 
r4alUe  d  des  espoirs  d'actim  procliaine  sur  lesquels  se 
fonde  la  r^forme  de  la  volantd.     Nous  savons  que  ces 
mythes  sociaux  n'empSchent  d'ailleurs  nuUement  Vhomme 
de  savoir  tirer  profit  de  toutes  les  observations  qu'il  jail 


au  cours  de  sa  vie,  et  ne  font  point  obstacle  d  ce  quHl 
remplisse  ses  occupations  normales. 

"  Les  premiers  Chretiens  attendaient  le  retour  du 
Christ  et  la  ruine  totale  du  monde  paien,  avec  Vinstaura- 
tion  du  royaume  des  SairUs,  pour  ki  fin  de  la  premiire 
gdn^ration.  La  catastrophe  ne  se  produisit  pas,  rruiis  la 
pensee  chr^tienne  tira  un  td  parti  du  mythe  apocalyp- 
tique  que  certains  savants  contemporains  voudraient  que 
toute  la  predication  de  J^sus  eut  port^  sur  ce  sujet  unique."^ 

Monsieur  Renan  had  not  thought  it  necessary  to 
explain  whether  mankind  ever  lived  on  a  substance ; 
the  distinction  made  by  him  between  the  diet  of 
religious  beUevers  and  of  us  who  have  lost  our  reUgious 
beliefs  is  between  a  shadow  (une  ombre)  first-hand  and 
a  shadow  (Tomhre  d^une  ombre)  second-hand.  Monsieur 
Sorel  adds  the  information  that,  so  far  as  moral  growth 
is  concerned,  reaUty  must  not  be  considered  sufficiently 
nutritious.  That  is  the  gist  of  the  pages  just  quoted. 
But  lest  they  should  have  left  the  reader  unpersuaded, 
I  will  add  a  few  explanations,  and  an  illustration  not 
taken  from  the  historical  standpoint. 

Suppose  you  want  a  child  to  move  off  from  whatever 
occupation,  doubtless  mischievous,  he  may  be  engaged 
in.  If  you  say,  *'  Go  to  the  back-door,  and  you  will 
see  the  milkman  fiUing  the  milk-cans,"  you  are  making 
but  a  very  sKght  appeal  to  the  child's  imagination  and 
sentiment,  and  you  are  running  the  risk  that  the  milk- 

1  "  Reflexions  sur  la  Violence,"  p.  92. 


78 


Vital  Lies 


man  and  the  cans  may  happen  not  to  be  there  at  this 
moment ;  so  there  are  two  chances  against  you,  one 
that  the  child  will  not  budge,  and  the  other  that  the 
child  will  be  very  angry  and  never  again  beheve  a  word 
of  what  you  say.  But  if  you  say,  "  My  dear  young 
friend,  there  is  a  pot  of  pure  gold  at  the  foot  of  the 
rainbow,  and  you  would  be  truly  wise  to  go  and  secure 
it  at  once,"  you  will,  or,  at  least,  you  may,  get  the  child 
to  walk  for  miles  in  the  direction  you  tell  him,  and  he  can 
never  be  sure  that  the  pot  of  gold  was  not  just  a  Httle 
further  off. 

This  homely  simile  explains  the  superior  efficacy  of 

myths  in  cases  where  you  yourself  are  inventing  them, 

like  Plato's  guardians  making  up  "  noble  hes  "  for  the 

preservation    of    the    Commonwealth,   or  like  those 

Bonzes  and  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain  to  whom  the 

eighteenth  century,   voiced  by  Voltaire's  enchanting 

stories,  ascribed  the  mahgnant  and  selfish  invention 

of  rehgious  creeds  of  every  kind.     Now,  of  course,  we 

modems  have  got  beyond  such  silly  notions  {simpUsmes, 

the  French  call  them),  and  the  history  of  civiUzation 

and  rehgion  (even  when  treated  by  infidels  hke  Buckle 

and  Michelet)  has  made  it  obvious  that  there  never  have 

been  such  deUberate  virtuous  or  villainous  impostures. 

Add  to  this  that  a  course  of  Pragmatism  (and  you 

can  be  a  Pragmatist  without  ever  having  heard  of 

Professor  James  or  Mr  Schiller)  has  prepared  us  all  for 

the  practical,  if  not  theoretical,  recognition  that  it  is 


I 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      79 

quite  as  easy,  and  a  deal  more  efficacious,  to  begin 
by  beheving  oneself  whatever  others  had  better  beheve 
is  true  in  so  far  forth  and  according  to  its  "  fruits  for 
life.''  1  Monsieur  Sorel's  myth  is  therefore  your 
thoroughly  up-to-date  myth,  psychologically  correct, 
Bergsonian  withal,  for  Monsieur  Sorel  is  an  avowed 
follower  of  the  great  vitahst  psychologist,  of  the 
philosopher,  as  they  call  him,  of  action.  The  myth 
with  which  Monsieur  Sorel  deals  is  therefore  the 
spontaneous  myth,^  the  myth  which  people  make  up 
for  themselves,  or  accept  from  one  of  themselves  because 
they  might  themselves  have  made  it  up  ;  or  rather,  it 
is  the  myth  which  people  would  spontaneously  make 
out  of  something  presented  by  some  one  else  who 
meant  something  different;  for  history  shows  that 
the  Primitive  Church  had  its  EvangeHsts,  and  that 
SyndicaKsm  has  its  JournaHsts,  of  neither  of  whom 
the  historic  student  can  affirm  that  he  knows  exactly 
how  much  they  did  or  do  beheve.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
the  myth  as  enthroned  by  M.  Sorel  is  efficacious  in 
begetting  emotion  and  action  just  in  proportion  as  it 
expresses  men's  desires  and  dreams,  in  proportion  as 
it  is  symptomatic  of  an  akeady  existing  tendency  in  a 
given  direction.     One's  myth  is,  so  to  speak.  Oneself, 

»  Cf.  W.  James,  "  WiU  to  BeUeve,"  "  Pragmatism,"  and  "  Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience"  ;  SchiUer,  "  Humanism,"  etc. 

«  Prezzolini,  "  La  Teoria  Sindacalista,"  p.  133  :  "  Lo  sciopero 
generaie  i  una  ddle  piii  spontanee  idee  nella  classe  operaia,  vera  figlia 
deUa  coscienza  e  delV  azione  sva." 


M 


8o 


Vital  Lies 


and  in  so  far  familiar  and  comforting  ;  whereas  Reality 
is  something  outside,  indifferent,  and  frequently  hos- 
tile ;  at  the  very  best,  Reahty  is  not  busy  smoothing 
one's  pillow  or  waiting  to  answer  the  bell. 

Moreover  (and  here  we  return  to  the  pot  of  gold  at 
the  foot  of  the  rainbow),  a  myth  is  eminently  vague, 
not  limited  in  time  and  space  (being  as  much  an  emotion 
as  a  thought),  so  that  it  can  fit  individual  requirements 
as  well  as  collective  ones,  and,  what  is  most  important 
of  all,  never  disappoint  those  requirements,  similar 
or  dissimilar,  by  realization. 

For,  of  course,  the  essential  characteristic  of  a  myth 
is  that,  whatever  else  it  may  produce  (and  M.  Sorel 
assures  us  that  it  can  produce  all  the  greatest  things 
visible  from  the  "  historical  standpoint "),  the  one 
thing  which  it  cannot  produce  is  its  own  realization. 
It  is  part  of  the  Messianic  Myth  that  the  Messiah 
never  makes  his  appearance ;  did  not  the  Messianic 
Jews  crucify  Jesus  Christ  for  saying  he  had  come  ? 
It  is  part  of  the  mythical  character  of  the  "  General 
Strike  "  that  it  will  never  come  off.  Like  that,  you 
can  continue  expecting,  and  getting  the  greatest  output 
of  sanctity  and  heroism  out  of  your  expectation.  You 
can  even,  as  Signor  Prezzolini  has  told  us,  get  the 
Superman  whom  you  do  not  expect  or  want  at  all, 
if  only  you  go  on  expecting  something  else,  like  the 
General  Strike,  with  sufficient  self-denying  fervour. 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      8i 


VII 


As  a  matter  of  fact,  therefore,  we  are  dealing  not 
with  one  messianic  expectation,  but  with  two.  There 
is  the  messianic  expectation  of  the  General  Strike  and 
the  Coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  Labour,  an  expectation 
whose  realization  is  believed  in  by  the  Syndicalist 
Proletariat ;  and  there  is  the  messianic  expectation 
of  the  coming  of  the  new  Proletarian  Humanity  and 
its  realization  through  belief  in  the  General  Strike ; 
and  this  messianic  expectation  is  also  very  genuinely 
believed  to  be  really  realizable  ;  only  it  is  entertained 
not  by  the  Proletariat  but  by  Monsieur  Sorel  and  the 
intellectual  bourgeois  his  disciples. 

And  the  puzzling  (and  yet  true !)  circumstances 
about  these  equally  truly  existing  messianic  expecta- 
tions (we  must  not  call  both  myths !)  is  that  their 
relation  is  such  that  while  M.  Sorel's  expectation  of 
the  coming  of  the  Proletarian  New  Humanity  is  strictly 
dependent  for  realization  on  the  Proletarian  expecta- 
tion of  the  General  Strike,  this  Proletarian  expectation 
of  the  General  Strike  would  come  to  an  instant  end  were 
the  Proletariat  to  accept  or  even  to  understand  Monsieur 
Sorel's  expectation  of  the  coming  of  the  Proletarian 
New  Humanity. 


82 


Vital  Lies 


VIII 

These  almost  metaphysical  complications  make  the 
situation  just  a  trifle  delicate,  and  M.  Sorel'a  book  is 
full  of  fear  lest  the  effects  of  the  Syndicalist  Myth — 
nay,  the  S3mdicali8t  Myth's  very  existence — may  be 
jeopardised  by  lack  of  faith  and  fervour ;  indeed,  we 
shall  see  that  the  "  Violence  "  which  he  takes  for  his 
title  is  intended  to  keep  up  the  requisite  fury  of  class 
warfare  and  the  consequent  output  of  millenarian 
virtues. 

It  is  here  that  Syndicalism — meaning  thereby  not 
the  mere  reality  of  existing  syndicates  and  syndicated 
workmen,  but  the  personified  imconscious  essence 
which  guides  that  trumpery  reality  in  a  direction  it 
little  dreams  of — it  is  here  that  Sjmdicalism  steps  in, 
showing  itself  to  be  the  true  historical  Will,  and  a  Will 
mysteriously  related  to  Bergson's  Evolution  Creatrice.^ 

"  Le  syndicalisme,''  writes  Sorel  (p.  89),  "  s^efforce 
d'emphyer  des  moyens  d" expression  qui  projettetU  sur 
les  choses  une  pleine  lumiere,  qui  les  posent  parfaitement 

*  "  Cette  philosophie  par  laquelle  Bergson  a  renouvdi  la  psychologie, 
M.  Sorel  et  la  Nouvdle  Ecole  en  font  Vapplicaiion  a  la  Sodologie  et 
a  V Economic  politique.  Uoppoeition  du  moi  superficiel  et  du  moi 
profond,  du  micanique  et  du  vivant,  ils  la  trouvent . ...  en  science 
sociale  dans  Vopposition  entre  Tutopie  et  le  mythe  ;  en  politigtie  dans 
Vantagonisme  entre  le  riformisme  ligal  et  la  revolution  totale." 
0.  Guy-Grand :  "  La  Pbilosophie  Syndicaliste  "  in  "  Annales  de  la 
Jeuuesae." 


^ 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      83 

a  la  place  que  leur  assigns  leur  nature  et  qui  accusent 
toute  la  valeur  des  forces  mises  en  jeu.  Au  lieu 
d(UUny£f  les  oppositions,  il  faudra,  pour  suivre  Vorienta- 
tion  syndicaliste,  les  mettre  en  relief  ;  il  faudra  donner 
un  aspect  aussi  solide  que  possible  aux  groupements  qui 
luUent  entre  eux  ;  enfin  ou  reprSsentera  les  niouvements 
des  nmsses  r^U^es  de  telle  maniere  que  Vdnie  des  rMies 
en  regoive  une  impression  pleinement  maitrisante.^' 

"  Une  pleine  lumidre ! "  writes  M.  Sorel.  But  it 
is  the  light  produced  by  the  fashionable  burner  patented 
by  Bergson  ("  c'est  la  connaissance  parfaite  de  la 
Philosophic  Bergsonienne,"  M.  Sorel  informs  us,  in 
a  footnote,  p.  95)  and,  like  that  of  the  place  referred  to 
by  Job,  it  is  li^U  which  is  as  darkness.  For  remark 
that  the  lucidity  of  the  arrangement  is  to  consist  in 
suppressing  any  troublesome  "indecisions"  such  as 
parliamentary  Socialists  [farceurs,  bavards,  menteurs, 
and  moreover  admired  by  decadents  !)  may  have  left 
in  the  mind  of  the  working  man ;  and  in  making  the 
parties  in  conflict  seem  as  conflicting  as  possible, 
doubtless  by  suppressing  all  mention  of  the  many 
interests  which,  as  human  beings,  as  consumers,  and 
even  as  employers  and  employed  they  actually  have  in 
common.  Any  such  reality  is  to  be  left  out  in  that 
dynamogenetic  myth,  left  to  return  (expelle  furca 
one  may  say  of  reality,  since  reality  i^  nature)  and 
revenge  itself  by  Assuring  and  rending  the  fine  myth- 
built  edifice.    The  lucidity  recommended  by  M.  Sorel 


84 


Vital  Lies 


\i 


consists  in  "  representing  the  movement  of  the  revolu- 
tionary masses  in  such  a  way  that  the  soul  of  the 
insurgent  shall  receive  a  completely  overpowering 
impression "  {en  regoive  une  impression  phinement 
maUrisatUe).  Language,  being  but  a  creation  of  mere 
superficial  logic  and  a  traitor  to  the  "  profound  reality 
of  things,"  must  somehow  be  supplemented  for  the 
production  of  such  adequate  effects. 

"  Le  langage,  ne  saurait  suffire  four  produire  de  teU 
rSsuUats  d'une  mani^re  assure,  il  faiU  faire  appel  d 
des  ensembles  dHm/iges  capables  d'evoqiier  en  bloc  et  par 
la  seule  intuition  {SoreVs  underlining)  avant  toute  analyse 
r^fiSchie  la  wxisse  des  sentiments  qui  correspondent  aux 
diverses  manifestations  de  la  guerre  engage  par  le 
socialisme  contre  la  sociit^  m/yderne" 

It  is  not  interesting  to  meet  again,  after  having 
become  acquainted  with  it  in  our  studies  of  Professor 
James's  views  on  mysticism,  and  of  Father  Tyrrell's 
"  Religious  Idea"  that  venerable  primaeval  conglomerate 
of  objective  fact  and  subjective  associations  and 
emotions  ?  That  "  connaissance  parfaite  de  la 
Philosophic  Bergsonienne,"  that  "  ensemble  d'images 
capables  d'evoquer  en  bloc  et  par  la  seule  intuition 
(Mr  Sorel  has  even  furnished  the  very  italics  I  wanted) 
avant  toute  analyse  reflechie  la  masse  des  sentiments 
qui  correspondent,  etc.,  etc "  ?  Here  the  sentence 
ends  off — "  correspondent  aux  diverses  manifestations 
de  la  guerre  engagee  par  le  socialisme  contre  la  societe 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      85 

moderne " — but  it  might  equally  well  have  been 
tailed  off  into  conneidon  with  Father  Tyrell's  "  Catholic 
Idea "  or  with  Mr  Ernest  Crawley's  "  Elemental 
Points  of  View  "  described  as  a  panacea  for  preserving 
a  Tory  Church  and  State  from  the  dangers  of  Ration- 
alists and  Socialists. 

For  here  is  the  mischief  (the  eternal  drawback  of 
all  Vital  Lies)  that  everybody  equally  can  deal  in 
"  ensembles  d'images  capables  d'evoquer  en  bloc  et 
par  la  seule  intuition  avant  toute  analyse  reflechie," 
that  is  to  say,  in  confusions  of  what  is  with  what  is  hoped 
or  feared,  in  truths-in-so-far-forth  and  all  the  various 
devices  of  (however  unofficial)  W ill'to-helieve  Prag- 
matism. Indeed,  as  Signer  Prezzolini  remarked  about 
the  Modernists,  the  only  objection  to  such  will-to- 
believe  Pragmatism  is  that  one  cannot  keep  it  for  one's 
own  exclusive  use.  And,  therefore,  in  the  long  run, 
we  have  all  of  us  to  invoke  objective  reality,  facts 
which  take  none  of  our  habits  and  likings  into  considera- 
tion, as  a  final  appeal  against  our  opponents  and  our 
opponents'  "  beliefs  "  and  "  myths." 


IX 

As  regards  our  Sjoidicalist  Myth,  these  objective 
and  opposing  factors  are  already  giving  M.  Sorel 
a  good  deal  of  annoyance,  and  even  anxiety. 


86 


Vital  Lies 


The  dangers  besetting  the  present  and  the  future 
are  naturally  not  those  insisted  on  by  orthodox 
economists,  for  M.  Sorel,  like,  I  suppose,  all  Syndicalists, 
proceeds  from  Marx  and  takes  all  Marx's  economics 
for  granted,  much  as  the  Messanist  Christians  of 
the  first  century  took  for  granted  the  Law  and  the 
Prophets. 

The  powers  of  evil  dreaded  by  M.  Sorel  are  various  : 
they  are  the  spontaneous  tendency  to  social  improve- 
ment, the  more  accommodating  spirit  of  capitalistic 
society,  the  Socialistic  hankerings  of  parliamentary 
governments,  above  all,  the  growing  humanitarianism 
of  an  enfeebled  bourgeoisie.  These  nefarious  realities 
must  be  checked  at  once  in  the  interest  of  the  myth 
which  alone  can  bring  us  the  new  mankind  and  its 
new  virtues— " /or,"  writes  M.  Sorel  (p.  45),  "  «* 
.  .  .  les  bourgeois  4gar^s  jxir  les  blagues  des  pr^icateurs 
de  morale  ou  de  sociohgie,  reviennent  d  un  id^al  de 
m^iocfiti  conservatrice,  cherchent  d  corriger  les  abus 
de  V^conomie  et  veulent  romjyre  avec  la  barbarie  de  leurs 
ancienSj  alors  une  partie  des  forces  qui  devaient  produire 
la  tendance  du  capitalisme  est  employ^  d  Venrayer, 
du  hasard  sHrUroduit  et  Vavenir  du  monde  est  compUte- 
merU  indetermin^.  Cette  indderminalion  augmerUe 
encore  si  le  proUtariat  se  convertit  d  la  paix  sociale  en 
meme  temps  que  ses  maitres.  ..." 
^  Inddermin^,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of  not  being 
determined    in   accordance    with   M.   Sorel'a  wishes, 


. 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      87 


and  with  the  Will— the  historic,  unconscious  Will— of 
that  semi-personified  abstraction  Syndicalism. 

From   the   historic    standpoint,    whence    Monsieur 
Sorel  directs  the  future  (as  other  historically-minded 
persons  direct,  in  a  fashion,  the  past),  every  real  factor 
omitted  from  the  great  Marxian  horoscope  is  treated 
as  an  interloping  "  chance,"  very  much  as  theologians 
treat  man's  disobedience  and  the  wiles  of  Satan  as  an 
atrocious   accident   breaking   in   upon   the   harmony 
pre-ordained  by  a  wise  and  benevolent  omnipotence. 
Imagine  the  scandalous  historic  irregularity  of  tolerable 
relations  between   capital  and  labour  coming  about 
by,  let  us  say,  a  gradual  interpenetration  of  the  two 
classes,  or  the  recognition  of  the  common  interests 
as   consumers    uniting    both    against   the    prsetorian 
tyranny  of   special   monopolies   and    rings,   whether 
in   the  shape   of   oil  trusts  or   of  railway  servants' 
Syndicates. 

More  shocking  still  would  be  the  disruption  in  the 
Syndicalist  order  of  the  universe  if,  the  parliamentary 
(what  we  call  Fabian)  element  of  Socialism  increasing, 
its  reforms  and  reconstructions  gradually  left  the 
catastrophic  Sjmdicalist  with  nothing  to  rage  against ; 
and,  in  a  disastrous  dulness  of  logical  give  and  take, 
dissolved  the  jumble  of  combative  emotional  associa- 
tions and  Marxian  theorisings  which  alone  can  keep 
up  the  regenerating  expectation  of  the  General  Strike, 
Can  any  historically-minded  philosopher  endure  the 


88 


Vital  Lies 


gradual  substitution  of  such  selfish  and  comfortable 
lucidity  for  that  "  connaissance  parfaite  de  la  Philo- 
sophie  Bergsonienne "  ?  M.  Sorel  for  one  is  going 
to  oppose  himself  with  all  his  might  to  any  such 
intrusion  of  "  hasard  "  ;  and  so  he  preaches  recourse 
to  "  La  Violence,"  violence  on  the  part  of  the  prole- 
tariat for  the  sake  of  rousing  violence  on  the  part  of 
the  bourgeoisie,  in  order  to  keep  up  the  violence  of  the 
proletariat  and  Da  Capo.  For  without  the  "  con- 
naissance parfaite  "  of  a  state  of  class  warfare,  you 
cannot  get  your  crop  of  heroic  and  saintly  virtues, 
your  moral  regeneration  of  the  world,  and  your  New 
Humanity  willed  by  Syndicalism. 

We  can  now  imderstand  the  apparent  contradiction 
of  M.  Sorel  foretelling  the  course  of  historical  events, 
and  putting  out  so  much  zeal  lest  that  course  be  de- 
flected. 

"  Marx  supposait"  writes  M.  Sorel  (p.  48),  "  que 
la  bourgeoisie  rCavait  pas  besoin  d'Stre  excite  a  employer 
la  force  ;  nous  sommes  en  presence  d'un  fait  nouveau 
et  fort  impr^vu :  une  bourgeoisie  qui  cherche  d  att^uer 
la  force.  Faut-il  eroire  que  la  conception  Marxiste  est 
morte  ?  Nullement"  answers  M.  Sorel,  betraying  per- 
haps more  doubt  in  the  answer  than  in  the  question — 
"  car  la  violence  proUtarienne  entre  en  seine  en  mime 
temps  que  la  paix  sodale  pretend  apaiser  les  confiits. 
Non  seulement  la  violence  prol^rienne  peui  assurer 
la  r^lution  future  "  (i.e.,  by  frightening  the  bourgeoisie 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      89 


into  keeping  up  the  necessary  amount  of  class  hatred), 
"  mais  encore  elle  semhle  Stre  le  seul  moyen  dont  disposers 
Us  nations  europ^nnes  abruties  par  Vhumanitarisme 
pour  retrouver  leur  andenne  Snergie." 

That  famous  energy  !  The  energy  which  Gobineau, 
then  Nietzsche,  and  now  Monsieur  Sorel  (let  alone 
innumerable  other  literary  persons  incapable  of  hurting 
a  fly)  are  always  looking  for  in  the  past  and  in  the 
future  ;  one  might  almost  suspect  because  they  do  not 
feel  sufficient  thereof  in  themselves  to  recognise  it  in 
the  much  maligned  present ! 


And  now  we  have  got  to  the  element  of  humorous- 
ness,  which,  by  a  merciful  dispensation,  rarely  fails  to 
grow  up,  a  refreshing  prison  flower,  in  some  cranny  of 
even  the  grimmest  edifice  wherein  systematic  thinkers 
enclose  themselves  and  their  readers. 

Violence  is  requisite  to  keep  up  the  Myth  ;  Violence 
to  shake  up  those  miserable  bourgeois  {ve4les,  ahrutiSy 
etc.,  etc.)  who  have  not  the  spirit  needed  for  their  part 
of  Antichrist,  and  who,  left  to  themselves,  might  leave 
off  making  the  modicum  of  martjrrs  necessary  for  the 
upkeep  of  the  Messianic  Sjmdicalist  Myth.  Violence 
is  wanted ! 

Violence  (does  he  not  call  his  book  Reflexions  there- 


iSK!r-^*-i-,s;^!Bw 


m 


90 


Vital  Lies 


upon,  and  give  us,  heaven  knows,  Violence  of  vitupera- 
tion enough  behind  that  red- waving  title  ?),  and  once 
more  Violence  !  But  not  really  very  much  of  it.  Nor  in 
the  least  of  a  bad  kind  :  just  a  little  will  do  the  job, 
skilfully  applied,  made  the  most  of ;  but,  taken  in 
itself,  not  really  enough  to  put  on  the  point  of  a  knife 
and  choke  a  dog  withal.  For  do  not  forget  that  we 
are  in  the  land  of  mj^hs,  and  that  a  myth  of  violence 
may  produce  a  myth  of  bourgeois  reaction  without 
resorting  to  coarse  material  facts  :  the  facts,  as  usual 
when  we  deal  with  myths,  are  to  be  employed  merely 
as  symbols — "  nur  ein  Gleichniss,"  as  Goethe's  Chorus 
Mysticus  sings  with  so  much  sociological  acumen ; 
or,  in  more  modem  and  aesthetic  language,  it  is  a 
question  of  getting  the  "  values,"  the  values  of  violence, 
as  an  artist,  by  skilful  contrasts,  gets  the  full  values  of 
a  tropical  mid-day  out  of  a  lick  of  whitey-brown  body 
colour. 

Hence  M.  Sorel  (p.  168)  enters  upon  a  long  historical 
inquiry  to  prove,  more  or  less  on  Hamack's  authority, 
that  the  actual  number  of  early  Christian  martyrs 
was  very  small ;  deducing  from  the  efficacy  of  these 
few  but  telling  acts  of  faith,  that,  analogically  .  .  . 
well,  that  the  Syndicalist  Myth  of  Ruthless  Class  War- 
fare and  Universal  Cataclysm  will  prove  to  require,  for 
efficacy  similar  to  that  which  established  Christianity, 
only  a  comparatively  small  number  of  deeds  of  fury 
on  the  part  of  the  working  classes  :  the  terror-inspiring 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      91 


clash  and  clangour  will  be  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
real  breakage. 

*'  Nous  pouvons  done  concevoir  que  le  socialisrm  soil 
parfaitement  rdvolutionnaire  encore  quHl  n'y  ait  que  des 
conflUs  courts  et  peu  nombreux,  pourvu  que  ceux-ci  aient 
une  force  suffisante  pour  pouvoir  s^allier  d  Vidde  de  la 
grive  g^nerale :  tous  les  MnemerUs  apparaitrorU  alors 
sous  une  forme  amplifi^e,  et,  les  notions  catastrophiques 
se  maintenant,  la  scission  sera  parfaite" 

So  that,  while  class  warfare  will  be  in  all  imagina- 
tions {la  scission  parfaite  means  each  class  considering 
the  other  as  an  irreconcilable  and  villainous  enemy), 
*'  la  civilisation  rCest  point  menacde  de  succomber  sous 
les  cons^uences  d'un  dSveloppement  de  la  brutalitS.^^ 

Thus  does  the  apostle  of  proletarian  violence  fore- 
stall "Tobjection  que  Ton  adresse  souvent  aux  re- 
volutionnaires." 

Surely  one  of  the  most  admirable  peculiarities  of 
the  pragmatistic  spirit,  even  where  not  officially  pro- 
claimed, is  this  engaging  tendency  to  make  light  of 
obstacles ;  and,  even  in  the  moments  of  utmost 
partisanship,  to  show  itself  ready  to  oblige  everybody. 


XI 

Be  it  as  it  may  with  the  exact  dose  of  violence, 
M.  Sorel  adjures  the  proletariat  to  apply  it   in    the 


i 


\\v 


J 


interests  of  the  Syndicalist  myth,  of  the  War  of  Classes, 
and    the    coming    of    the    New    Humanity,   himself 
apparently  regardless  of  the  circumstance  that,  once 
they  have  understood  that  the  Mjrth  is  only  a  myth, 
these  working  men  may  refuse  to  expend  their  violence 
or  anything  else  in  its  service.     For  there  is  a  second 
humorous  element  in  the  matter,  and  that  is  shown  in 
the    original    publication  of  the  "Reflexions  sur  la 
Violence"  in  one  of  the  principal  periodicals  intended  to 
enlighten  and  discipline  the  working  man.    M.  SorePs 
belief  in  the  efficacy  of  his  Myth  is  so  complete  that 
he  cannot  refrain  from  explaining  that  it  is  a  Myth  to 
the  very  people  who  are  required  to  believe  that  it  is 
not  one  ! 


XII 

M.  Sorel's  acute  and  imaginative  mind  has  been 
busied  especially  with  the   lessons  of  history,   those 
lessons  which  will  never  cease  to  be  a  field  for  philo- 
sophical discussion,  because  they  consist  for  the  most 
part  in  merely  verbal  analogies.    Among  these  many 
alleged  lessons  of  history  there  is  one  which  does 
seem  irrefutable  (so  long,  of  course,  as  the  reverse  is 
irrefutable  also !),  namely,  that  a  great  many  great 
results  have  come  about  by  people  having  striven 
sufficiently  hard  to  bring  about  something  entirely 
different.    It  is  a  safe  prediction  that  something  will 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      93 


come  of  the  Socialistic  strivings  of  our  own  day  and  of 
the  days  of  our  fathers,  both  of  the  Parliamentary  and 
the  Syndicalist  sort,  both  of  M.  Jaures'  and  of  M. 
Sorel's  pattern  ;  and  it  is  safer  still  to  predict  that  the 
something  coming  will  not  be  exactly  like  what  these 
various  strivings  are  deliberately  aiming  at.  For, 
in  the  first  place,  Parliamentary  Socialism  and 
Syndicalistic  Socialism  must  have  different  effects 
whose  co-existence  will  produce  an  unintended  com- 
pound ;  and,  secondly,  the  strivings  of  all  the  various 
kinds  of  Socialism  (let  alone  Anarchism  also  !)  will  have 
to  combine,  in  however  hostile  a  spirit,  with  the  striv- 
ings of  Capitalism,  and  perhaps  with  the  strivings  of 
other  hitherto  uncatalogued  sociological  and  political 
factors.  You  cannot  let  loose  so  much  hope  and  fear, 
so  much  effort  to  take,  and  so  much  effort  to  keep, 
without  the  face  of  civilization  being  considerably 
changed  by  it  all.  That  much  seems  a  lesson  of  history, 
and,  moreover,  a  logical  necessity,  although  only  a 
Socialist  (Parliamentary  or  Syndicalist,  as  the  case  may 
be)  or  a  Bourgeois  Reactionary  can  feel  perfectly  sure 
whether  the  something  will  more  favour  collectivism 
or  capitalism  ;  and  it  is  mere  personal  guesswork  to  say, 
as  I  should  be  tempted  to  do,  that  the  new  rdgime  may 
be  some  yet  unknown  integration  of  capital  and  labour 
in  the  same  individuals,  and  may  be  brought  about  by 
the  end  of  class  warfare  in  a  united  resistance  of  all 
consumers    against   the   threatened   tyranny    of   the 


i^H 


i 


ii' 


J 


N 


i 


bureaucracy  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  monopolistic 
corporations  of  capitalists  or  of  labourers  on  the 
other. 

In  this  sense,  something  is  sure  to  come  out  of  eveiy- 
thing,  and  in  the  case  under  contemplation  something 
is  sure  to  come  out  of  the  Syndicalist  Myth,  as  something 
came  out  of  Early  Christian  Messianism ;  and  something 
which  is  sure  not  to  be  like  what  is  expected,  for  the 
very  good  reason  that  such  expectation  always  leaves 
out  of  count  everything  that  it  does  not  happen  to  think 
of,  which  omitted  factor  (in  the  case  of  Messianism, 
the  constitution  of  Antique  Civilization  and  of  human 
nature  in  general)  is  sure  to  assert  its  presence  in  a 
product  which  disappoints  everybody. 

In  this  sense  it  seems  probable,  nay,  certain,  that 
something  will  come  of  the  Syndicalist  Myth  of  the 
General  Strike,  with  its  programme  of  class  warfare 
and  violence  ;  that  the  something  will  be  different  from 
the  expected  Armageddon  and  coming  of  the  Proletarian 
Kingdom  on  Earth.    And  to  this  we  may  even  add 
that,  taking  visible  factors  for  progress  into  account, 
and  particularly  the  growing  capacity  of  classes  and 
individuals  to  see  and  defend  their  own  interests,  it 
it  possible,  even  probable,  that  the  unknown  something 
will  be  rather  less  intolerable  than  the  known  somethings 
of  the  present  and  the  past. 

But  this  is  not  M.  Sorel's  conception  of  the  way  that 
Myths— especially  his  own  Syndicalist  Myth— should 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      95 

act.  The  new  rigime  is  not  to  be  a  compromise,  a 
fusion  of  dijBEerent  interests,  but  a  subordination  of 
one  kind  of  interest  to  another ;  or  rather,  it  is  to  be 
an  exclusion  of  all  save  one  kind  of  interest.  Does 
M.  Sorel,  therefore,  partake  in  the  belief  that  the 
Syndicalist  Myth,  the  Myth  whose  efficacy  is  in  its 
mythicalness,  can  ever  be  realized  ?  Certainly  not. 
It  is  not  the  coming  of  a  r^ime  of  proletarian  happiness 
which  the  Syndical  myth  is  to  compass  :  firstly,  because 
that  would  mean  realizing  a  myth,  and  M.  Sorel  tells 
us  a  Myth  cannot  be  realized ;  secondly,  because 
M.  Sorel  shows  no  inclination  to  accept  a  future  of  pro- 
letarian comfort,  leisure,  and  culture  when  oSered  as 
the  fruit  of  any  cessation  of  class  warfare,  and  this  not 
because  the  oSer  of  such  a  future  appears  to  him  a  mere 
lying  promise  destined  to  prevent  its  own  accomplish- 
ment. Moreover,  and  this  is  a  significant  point, 
the  educative  functions  of  the  Syndicalist  Myth  are 
not  conceived  by  him  as  conducive  to  such  economic 
and  administrative  capacity  as  would  be  requisite 
before  the  proletarian  could  take  over  the  functions 
of  capitalism  while  continuing  those  of  labour.  For 
M.  Sorel  makes  a  distinct  proviso  that  the  beneficial 
effects  of  class  ivarfare  can  he  compassed  only  if  economic 
progress  he  not  jeopardized ;  a  proviso  referring, 
doubtless,  to  the  levelling  down  of  production  in  Trade 
Unions,  the  protection  of  idle  and  improvident  members 
lest  they  should  become  blacklegs,  and  to  the  systematic 


.' 


96 


Vital  Lies 


waste  of  time  and  damaging  of  plant  at  present  preached 
and  practised  in  Syndicalist  milieus  under  the  official 
name  of  sabotage. 

"  It  remains  to  be  seen,''  writes  M.  Sorel,  "  s'il  y  a, 
dans  le  momde  des  producteurs,  des  forces  d'entkomiasme 
capables  de  se  combiner  avec  la  morale  du  bon  travail, 
en  sorte  que,  dans  nos  jours  de  crise,  celle-ci  puisse 
acquerir  toute  I'autorite  qui  lui  est  necessaire  pour 
conduire  le  monde  dans  la  voie  du  progres  economique. 
.  .   ."  (underhning  mine). 

This  may  seem  to  many  of  us  a  very  big  if ;  and  a 
slovenly  reader,  or  one  who  had  not  penetrated  suffi- 
ciently into  the  Syndicalist  Myth,  might  imagine  that 
it  is  to  this  that  M.  Sorel  is  alluding  when  he  warns  us 
prophetically  against  "  Le  danger  qui  menace  I'avenir 
du  monde." 

But  that  "  danger''  he  goes  on  to  state,  "  pent  itre 
4cart4  si  le  prol^riat  s'aUache  avec  obstination  aux 
idees  r^lutionnaires,"  and  as  such  exclusive  attach- 
ment to  revolutionary  ideas  is  not  diminishing  but 
increasing  the  probabilty  of  economic  barbarism 
and  diminished  social  productiveness,  we  have  seen 
that  M.  Sorel  thinks  that  such  economic  decadence  may 
possibly  jeopardize  the  full  benefits  of  the  Syndicalist 
myth.  We  must,  therefore,  seek  elsewhere  for  that 
"  danger  which  threatens  the  future  of  the  world,  and 
which  can  be  avoided  if  the  working  class  adheres 
obstinately  to  revolutionary  ideas" 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      97 


XIII 

And  that  danger,  alluded  to  time  after  time  in  the 
whole  course  of  the  book,  is  called  by  its  name  on  the 
very  last  page  of  the  "  Reflexions  sur  la  Violence." 

"  J'ai  6tabli  ,  .  .  que  .  .  .  dans  la  ruine  totale  des 
institutions  et  des  moBurs,  il  reste  quelque  chose  de  puissant, 
de  neuf  et  d'intact,  c'est  ce  qui  constitue,  d  proprement 
pdrler,  I'dme  du  proletariat  rSvolutionnaire :  et  cela 
ne  sera  pas  entrain^  dans  la  d^h^ance  g^n&ale  des 
valeurs  morales,  si  les  travailleurs  ont  assez  d'^nergie 
pour  barrer  le  chemin  aux  corrupteurs  bourgeois,  en 
r&pondanl  d  leurs  avarices  par  la  brutality  la  plus  in- 
telligible." 

The  total  ruin  of  institutions  and  morals.  A  very 
dangerous  business  that  would  be  !  And  it  is,  indeed, 
difficult  to  imagine  how  the  worid  would  get  on  without 
institutions  or  morals  ;  so  difficult,  indeed,  that  some 
people  feel  sure  (and  myself  among  them)  that  the 
future  can  be  trusted  to  make  itself  an  ever  new  and 
adequate  supply  of  things  so  indispensable  to  its  safety. 
But  M.  Sorel,  like  many  even  of  his  most  Anarchical 
countrymen,  has  no  such  comfortable  though  mean- 
spirited  utilitarian  view  of  ethics  ;  for  him,  institutions 
and  morals  are  not  a  means,  but  an  end,  a  by-product 
of  human  life  which  human  life  will  neglect  and  starve, 
like  some  beautiful  and  useless  flower,  unless  en- 
2a 


98 


Vital  Lies 


thomiasme  waters  it  by  sacrificing  some  of  its  poor  little 
ration  of  happiness ;  nay,  I  suspect  that  in  M.  Sorel's 
thought,  morality  can  flourish  only  on  sacrifice,  on  tears 
perhaps,  and  possibly  on  blood. 

For  remark,  that  if  the  valeurs  morales  have  no  chance 
save  from  the  enthusiasm  and  self-sacrifice  begotten 
by  the  Syndicalist  myth,  that  Sjnidicalist  myth  cannot 
itself  be  kept  up  with  its  class  warfare  and  militant 
virtues,  except  by  the  application  of  such  "  violence  " 
(however  platonic)  as  will  exasperate  the  selfish  ruth- 
lessness  of  the  bourgeoisie,  and  make,  or  keep,  it  just 
as  wicked  and  vile  as  you  may  want  it. 

Did  not  the  enthusiasm  and  the  "  vigorous  and 
intact "  moral  values  of  Primitive  Christianity  re- 
quire, according  to  M.  Sorel,  a  soil  rich  in  the  vices 
of  decaying  Antiquity,  that  fertile  compost  of 
abominations  of  which  St  Paul  has  left  us  a  detailed 
analysis  ? 

And  there  comes  to  my  mind  a  sentence  in  the  book 
of  another  moralist  relying  upon  the  efficacy  (the  "  so- 
far-forth  "  truth)  of  myths. 

"  Not  the  Absence  of  Vice  "  writes  Professor  William 
James  ^  ''  but  Vice  there,  and  Virtue  holding  it  by  the 
throat,  seems  the  ideal  human  state.^' 

»  In  the  volume  of  essays  entitled,  "The  Will  to  Believe." 


1 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      99 


XIV 

. "  Et  si  le  nwnde  contem'porain,"  writes  M.  Sorel  (p. 
5«0),  "  ne  renferme  fas  des  racines  pour  une  nouveUe 
liorale,  que  deviendra-t-il  ?   .    .    .    Peu  de  temps  avant 

%  mort,  Renan  4tait  fort  pr^ccup^,  etc.  ...  " 

'  Here  we  are  back  at  our  starting-point,  namely,  the 
■  kinship  of  this  preacher  of  class  warfare  with  the  great 
free-thinking  obscurantist  who  wrote  (and  in  two 
different  places,  as  already  remarked)  that  we  are  living 
off  the  shadow  of  a  shadow,  and  wondered  what  un- 
substantial moral  pabulum  mankind  would  provide  for 
the  morrow. 

A  few  pages  further  (p.  250)  M.  Sorel  again 
quotes  Renan,  as  follows  : — 

"  Le  soldat  de  Na'polion  savait  bien  quHl  serait  toujours 
un  pauvre  homrm  ;  mats  il  sentait  que  Vepop^  cl  laquelle 
il  travaillait  serait  dernelle,  quHl  vivrait  dans  le  gloire 
de  la  France.  .  .  .  A  ddfaut  de  paradis  il  y  a  h  gloire 
qui  est  une  espdce  d' immortality." 

This  curious  quotation,  where  La  Gloire  takes  the 
place  of  religious  rewards,  has  connected  itself 
in  my  mind  with  a  certain  newspaper  interview  (La 
Voce,  December,  1909),  in  which  M.  Sorel  refers  to  a 
Latin,  what  he  calls  (from  Comeille)  a  Cornelian 
conception  of  virtue ;  for,  taken  together,  they  afford 
a  suggestion  of— how  shall  I  express  myself  ?— well, 


il 


lOO 


Vital  Lies 


'} 


of  the  texture  of  the  shadows  on  whose  shadows  we  are 
supposed  to  be  living. 

The  myth — ^for  that  is  the  original  shadow — ^is,  as 
M.  Sorel  shows  it  us,  an  obscure  fusion  of  concepts  and 
emotions,  and  its  function  consists  in  calling  forth  in 
the  individual  a  definitely  directed — indeed,  most  often 
a  monoideistic — enthusiasm,  which  enhances  his 
energy  and  endurance  far  beyond  his  normal  personal 
level,  and  keeps  up  this  exaltation  by  the  contagion 
of  a  similar  state  in  his  companions.  Now  such  an 
exaltation  of  individual  moral  energy,  and  such  direct- 
ing it  into  a  single  common  channel,  is  what  we  find 
connected  in  Classical  Antiquity,  or  rather  in  Classical 
Antiquity  as  interpreted  by  Renaissance  Italy  and 
seventeenth-  and  eighteenth-century  France,  with  the 
particular  thing  called  glory — not  the  glory  of  God, 
but  the  glory  (which  we  Anglo-Saxons  sometimes 
paraphrase  as  vainghrioicsness)  of  Man. 

"  Romains,  faime  la  gloire  et  ne  veux  point  nCtn  taire  : 
Des  travaux  des  humains  c'est  le  digne  salaire  ; 
Qui  n'ose  la  votdoir,  rCoae  la  miriier  " — 

(That  is  Voltaire,  doing  the  Corneille,  and  not  so 
badly  either.) 

And  it  is  with  such  glory  that,  as  is  shown  by  the 
quotation  from  Renan  by  Sorel,  both  these  myth- 
mongers  have  explicitly  connected  that  Ombre  without 
which  we  can  none  of  us  live. 


*- 


The  Syndicalist  Myth       loi 

"  A  defaut  de  Paradis  il  y  a  la  gloire,"  sajB 
M.  Renan,  "  qui  est  une  espte  d'immortalite." 

The  virtue-producing  myth  can  therefore  be  under- 
stood by  thinking,  not  merely  of  religious  "  revivals," 
but  also  of  the  Napoleonic,  or  other  similar  military 
^p^s,  whose  glory,  as  we  are  told,  will  be 
eternal. 

Now  virtue  of  this  sort  does  not  merely  depend 
for  its  production  (so  the  myth-mongers  tell  us)  on  a 
delusion.  This  extra,  this  "  marginal  increment "  as 
economists  would  word  it,  of  virtue,  may  itself  be 
something  delusory,  inasmuch  as  it  does  not  answer  to 
the  permanent  energies  and  organized  habits  of  the 
individuals  and  the  crowds  from  which  it  has  been 
obtained. 

Hence,  even  as  each  soul-exalting  mjrth  sooner  or 
later  discredits  itself  by  insolvency,  and  requires  re- 
placing by  some  new  myth  of  still  untested  credit, 
so  also  does  the  individual  or  collective  soul  turn  out 
unable  to  keep  up  an  output  of  heroism  surpassing  its 
real  resources.  This  explains  the  distressing  manner 
in  which  great  myth-bred  movements  have  either  died 
out  ingloriously  or  been  succeeded  by  the  more  or  less 
cynical  turning  to  profit  of  the  dogmas  and  rituals 
they  had  created.  Think  of  the  moral  bankruptcy 
of  the  various  Christian  revivals,  with  their  sects  and 
monastic  orders  arising  in  successive  reformations ; 
think  of  the  moral  bankruptcy  of  the  humanitarian 


I02 


Vital  Lies 


myth  of  1789,  even  before  the  Directory  and  the  Con- 
sulate. Nay,  at  this  very  moment  stalwart  French 
Liberals,  believers  in  M.  Sorel  like  MM.  Peguy  and 
Daniel  Halevy,  are  lamenting  the  degeneration  of  the 
splendid  Dreyfusard  movement  into  political  intrigue 
and  anti-clerical  jobbery.^ 

And,  in  the  face  of  such  a  phenomenon  of  national 
delusion  as  Italy  (December  1911)  at  present  offers, 
I  am  led  to  wonder  whether  the  political  and 
administrative,  the  civic  marasma  which  has  grieved 
and  disappointed  every  well-informed  friend  of  Italy 
("  Italy  is  not  yet  a  nation  "  wrote  Giovanni  Cena, 
alluding  to  the  incapacity  shown  after  the  various 
Earthquakes)  may  not  be  attributable  in  part  to 
the  myth-bred  enthusiasm  which  was  employed,  if 
not  required,  to  obtain  her  independence  as  a 
nation. 

Myths  and  the  moral  fillip  they  produce  are  apparently 

among    the    automatic    means    by    which    mankind, 

historically  considered,  shoves  along  on  its  path.    But 

are  they  not  wasteful,  perhaps  mischievous  means  ? 

And  should  we  not  ask  ourselves  whether  they  are  not, 

on  the  whole,  vast,  even  if  inevitable  blunders,  and  ask 

ourselves  also  whether  we  are  not  blundering  (and 

blundering   from   intellectual   wantonness,   not   from 

*  Hal6vy,  "  Apologie  pour  notre  Paaae  ;  P^guy,  "  Notre  Jeunesse," 
both  in  "  Cahiers  de  la  Quinzaine,"  1910-11.  Cf.  also  the  lament- 
able picture  of  French  political  life  in  the  latter  volumea  of 
RoUaad'a  "  Jean  Christophe." 


i 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      103 

ignorance)    in   the   latter-day   admiration   for   them 
exemplified  by  M.  Sorel  and  his  followers  ? 


XV 


What  is  the  balance,  the  cash-vdlue  of  a  myth? 
What  are  the  real  fruits  for  life  of  that  exaltation, 
religious,  military,  revolutionary — which,  as  our 
myth-mongers  remind  us,  raises  men  above  their 
ordinary  selves  ? 

I  have  no  wish  to  sit  among  the  re-valuers  of  values, 
merely  denying  because  others  have  affirmed.  I 
merely  wish  to  try  and  think  out  for  m3rself ,  and  ask 
others  to  study  what  may  be  the  complicated,  contra- 
dictory, perhaps  inextricable  truth  about  this  matter. 
I  have  just  put  the  case  against  the  myth,  pointing 
out  the  dangers  of  tliis  alleged  lifting  of  individuals 
and  masses  above  their  natural  moral  level.  Let  me 
put  the  case  in  its  favour,  so  far  as  I  myself  can 
admit  it. 

It  seems  undeniable  that  most  of  us  are  often,  indeed 
nearly  always,  putting  out  less  moral  and  intellectual 
powers  than  we  really  have,  because  these  powers  are 
clogged  by  habit  or  run  to  waste  in  wrong  channels. 
Our  spiritual  health,  let  alone  growth,  can  benefit 
by  the  breaking  up  of  routines,  the  opening  of  new 
directions,  by  the  occasional  occurrence  of  some  sort  of 


I' 


104 


Vital  Lies 


y  ^ 


ill 


crisis :  it  is  not  only  religious  persons  who  need  to  be 
twice-,  indeed,  thrice-horn.    The  drums  and  cymbals 
of  Myths  call  forth  our  dormant  energies  ;  the  mythic 
expectation  supplies  a  nucleus  round  which  new  habits 
can  organize.    In  so  far  Myths  are  accomplishing  a 
vital    function  for  the  race.     But    there  are  other 
factors  of  such  necessary  disruption  and  reorganization. 
There  are  natural  renovations,  re- births  of  the  soul, 
besides  these  artificial,  or  at  least  accidental  ones. 
Love,  for  instance,  and  in  every  one  of  its  meanings, 
from  the  bodily  stirring  of  sex  and  parenthood,  to  the 
passionate  preference  for  certain  kinds  of  work  or 
surrounding*— love   in   each   of   its   various   avatars 
elicits  the  latent  forces  and  brushes  away  the  efEete 
habits  of  the  soul.    And  does  not  every  kind  of  strong 
joy  do  the  same,  and  many  kinds  of  grief  ?    Life  is, 
or  might  be,  full  of  its  own  replenishings.    And  I  am 
by  no  means  sure  that  if  it  is  not,  this  is  not  due  in 
part  to  the  clogging  presence  of  old  myths.    For  in 
speaking  of  myths  and  their   functions,   we    ought 
surely  to  remember  that  a  myth  is  not  always  spontane- 
ous and  new-bom :    it  is,  in  most  cases,  quite  incal- 
culably old  and  most  artificially  preserved.    Indeed, 
while  M.  Sorel  ascribes  all  morality  to  the  coming  of 
new  myths,  Mr  Crawley~who  stands  in  this  for  a  far 
larger  number  of  thinkers— has  ascribed  all  morality 
to  the  survival  of  old  ones. 


The  Syndicalist  Myth       105 


XVI 

"  Les  peraonnes  rdigieusea  vivent  d'une  ombre.  Nous  vivons  de 
Voinbrc  cTune  otnbre.     De  quoi  vivra-d-on  apres  nous  ?  " 

Evidently,  if  any  one  continues  living  after  us,  it 
will  be  on  something.  And  if  people  have  lived  for 
thousands  of  years  on  a  shadow,  and  are  now  living  on 
that  shadow's  shadow,  it  seems  likely  that  being  thus 
happily  accommodating  about  spiritual  nourishment, 
mankind  will  go  on  finding  or  making  itself  a  mjrthical 
pabulum,  or  learn  to  live  without  such  aliments  at 
all,  who  knows.  After  this  long  dieting  on  illusions 
and  traditions  of  illusions,  it  may,  in  some  odd  unex- 
pected manner,  accustom  its  spiritual  digestion  to  the 
strong,  but  not  very  palatable  food  of  reality. 

But,  after  much  turning  it  over,  I  am  beginning  to 
suspect  that  all  this  question  of  what  will  replace  present 
and  past  myths,  is  but  an  idle  one.  It  is  due,  I  believe, 
to  the  dilettantishness  of  our  philosophic  thinkers,  and 
even  more  to  us  philosophers  attempting  to  appropriate, 
to  secularize  for  our  own  benefit,  the  booths  and  sign- 
boards, the  inventories  and  ledgers  of  former,  or  still 
existing,  priesthoods.  Those  priests  we  are  trying  to 
replace  (evjn  when  we  officially  keep  them)/earned  their 
livelihood  and  kept  up  their  dignity  by  dealing  in 
mysteries,  dispensing  consolations  and  purifications, 
trafficking  in  amulets  and  philtres,  explaining  dreams, 


f 


1 06 


Vital  Lies 


V 


In 


i(i 


and  generally  foretelling  the  future.  Have  we  not 
peradventure,  taken  over  their  business,  and  fed  our- 
selves, if  not  our  readers,  ofi  the  manufacture  of  fig- 
ments ? 

Surely  it  were  well  if  we  pondered  over  this  possibility 
when  we  see  Tolstoi  protesting  that  without  his 
particular  spiritual  formula  the  life  of  man  is  no  better 
than  that  of  cattle,  or  no  life  at  all ;  when  we  see  poor 
wavering,  self-assertive  Nietzsche  labouring  at  suc- 
cessive fashion  plates,  patterns  of  Supermen,  in  order 
that  the  centuries  to  come  may  know  once  for  all  "  how 
to  make  themselves  noble  "  (sich  veredlen) !  Nay,  even 
that  nice,  wise,  kind,  sceptical  old  Renan,  full  of  amiable, 
priestly  optimism,  asking,  with  one  foot  in  the  grave, 
what  delusions  unregistered  in  his  pharmacopeia  will 
serve  as  invalid's  food  for  the  coming  generations ! 
And  now,  here  is  M.  Sorel,  Kenan's  syndicalist 
disciple,  promising  an  adequate  supply  of  quite  fresh 
morality,  an  abundant  output  of  heroism  and  sublime, 
by  the  simple  device  of  an  artificially  fostered  myth 
of  General  Strike  and  General  Class  Warfare. 

Thinking  over  these  examples  (and  sundry  others 
not  mentioned  in  this  volume),  I  feel  myself  growing 
suspicious  of  these  stolen  Church  properties.  And  the 
suspicion  increases  when,  returning  to  M.  Sorel's 
volume,  I  re-read  the  passage  from  Renan  immediately 
preceding  the  famous  "  de  quoi  vivra-Uon  apr^s 
nous ?  " 


The  Syndicalist  Myth       107 


(( 


Les  valeurs  morales  haissent "  (it  is  Renan  writing, 
and  Sorel  quoting,  but  myself  underhning),  "  cela  est 
8iir  ;  le  sacrifice  disparait  presque ;  ou  voit  venir  le  jour 
ou  I'egoisme  organise  remplacera  I'amour  et  la  d'evoue- 
ment." 

I  have  underlined  those  two  sentences,  not  merely 
because  their  self-confidence  amazes  me,  but  because 
their  meaning  is  important  in  proportion  to  its 
obscurity. 

Does  Renan  mean  that,  for  lack  of  the  necessary  self- 
sacrifice,  mankind  will  rot  away  and  perish  ?  If  so, 
the  thing  to  be  grieved  at  is  the  terrible  result  of  such 
diminished  devourment  and  self-sacrifice,  not  the  lack 
of  these  virtues  which  has  so  produced  it :  after  a 
railway  accident  it  is  not  over  the  wrong  signalling  or 
the  jerry  built  bridge  that  we  lament,  but  over  the  re- 
sulting deaths  and  mutilations  ;  if  trains  and  passengers 
had  been  just  as  safe  with  no  signalling  at  all,  or  across 
bridges  of  lath  and  plaster,  there  would  be  no  cause  for 
lamentation.^ 

But    this    is    not    Renan's    meaning.    Like    many 

1  Cf.  Pi-ezzoUni,  "  Teoria  Sindacalista,"  p.  122. 

"  AUa  lotta  di  classe  intesa  come  conquista  politica  e  come  miglior- 
amento  conlinuo  non  danno  i  sindacalisti  alcuna  importanza :  essi 
la  considerano  invece  soiio  Vaspetto  etico,  e  pensano  piuttosto  aUe 
nuove  virtii  che  crea  che  ai  maggiori  salari  che  permette  e  pro- 
mette."  The  press  campaign  in  favour  of  the  Tripolitan  War  has 
presented  an  amusing  interweaving  of  promises  of  lands  flowing 
with  milk  and  honey  mth  just  such  "  disinterested  "  readiness  to 
pay  half  a  million  (let  alone  killed  and  wounded)  for  the  acquisition 
of  Latin  virtues. 


I 


moralists  and  all  religious  persons,  he  has  cultivated 
(at  least,  in  others),  virtue,  purity,  altruism,  heroism, 
sublimity,  so  strenuously  for  their  own  sake,  that  he 
forgets  that  their  cultivation  was  originally  detennined 
by  their  usefulness;    and  he  is  shocked  at  the  bare 
thought  of  a  worid  sufficiently  decent  to  require  rather 
less  of  them.     For  moralists  and   religious  persons 
have  striven,  or  at  least  talked,  so  long  to  establish, 
let    us    say,    strict    marriage    ties    for    the    greater 
safety  and  happiness  of    mankind  that  they  would 
willingly  sacrifice   any  human    decency   and   happi- 
ness   which    could     dispense    with     such     conjugal 
indissolubility. 

And  similariy  with  patriotism,  it  has  cost  mankind 
a  deal  of  moral  effort  to  establish  it ;  and  moralists 
cannot  admit  that  the  time  may  come  when  it  will  be 
superseded,  like  horsemills  and  handlooms. 

That  Renan  is  just  such  a  moralist  (a  gardener  bent 
on  prize  vegetables  rather  than  on  feeding  the  hungry) 
is  revealed  by  his  horror  at  organized  selfishness  ever 
replacing  the  virtues.  But  would  organizable  selfish- 
ness not  be  the  very  perfection  of  conceivable  virtue,  if 
virtue  is  that  which  conduces  to  the  world's  happiness 
and  progress  in  prosperity  ? 

This,  of  course,  is  not  at  all  Rejian's  conception.  "  Si 
ce  globe  vient  A  manquer  d  ses  devoirs  "—he  writes  with 
gloomy  optimism— "i/  »Vn  trouvera  d'aiUres  'pour 
pousser  a  oulrance  le  programme  de  toute  vie.  .  .  ." 


The  Syndicalist  Myth      109 

You  imagine,  perhaps,  that  Renan  means  herewith 
that  if  this  globe  were  to  perish  from  sheer  lack  of 
dutifulness,  another  globe,  cultivating  those  neglected 
and  necessary  spiritual  qualities,  will  take  its  place 
with  a  new  lease  of  life  ?  Nothing  so  crass !  The 
sentence  closes  with  a  definition  of  life's  proper 
program.  Listen :  "  Pour  prusser  d  outrance  le 
programme  de  tout  vie  :  lumi^re,  raison,  vMd.^* 

So  if  this  poor  old  world  of  ours  achieved  life  and 
happiness  without  compassing  that  threefold  reiteration, 
that  tautological  trinity  of  Lumi^re,  Raison,  V6rit^, 
another  world  would  have  to  take  its  place,  a  world  with 
sounder  views  about  devoirs.  Now  when  a  man  like 
Renan  speaks  of  devoirs,  of  what  is  due,  we  may  well 
ask  due,  duty,  to  whom  ?  Due  to  mankind,  coming  and 
to  come  ?  But  would  mankind  ask  for  Lumi^re,  Raison, 
Verite,  or  be  wise  in  asking,  before  more  humble 
desiderata  were  forthcoming  ?  Surely  there  would  be 
neither  light  nor  reason  in  such  a  choice,  and  mankind 
would  never  make  it.  Hence  that  devoir  is  not  to 
mankind.  It  is,  in  fact  quite  evidently,  from  or  of 
mankind.  And  asking  once  more  towa/rds  whom,  we 
are  met  by  a  mere  impersonal  vagueness  called  Dieu,  or 
perhaps  some  new  fangled  similar  abstraction,  but 
behind  which  lurks  what  Nietzsche  (alone,  I  fancy, 
among  philosophers)  had  the  clear-sighted  outspoken- 
ness to  call  "  My  taste — mein  Geschmack.^^  In  other 
words,  there  would,  in  this  case  be  found  hidden  the 


'^J 


..£^^ 


■HWiBBSP 


H^HfiSS- 


I  lO 


Vital  Lies 


habits  of  mind,  the  standards,  nay,  the  professional  and 
professorial  preferences. 

There  was,  indeed,  in  Renan  another  element,  of 
straightforward    sympathy,    of    honest,    shamefaced, 
sceptical  good  sense,  making  him  insinuate  ever  and 
again,  indeed  at  times  proclaim,   that  Caliban  was 
a  safer  monster,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  than  sublime 
Prospero  ;  that  the  craving  for  ease,  peace  and  pleasure, 
all  poor  vulgar  mankind's  pathetic  recoil  from  pain  and 
passionate  grasping  at  happiness,  might  after  aU,  and 
more  than  any  taste  for  "  Lumiere  "  and  "  Devoue- 
ment "  be  the  force  which  drives  the  spiritual  world. 
Who  knows  ?  the  force  through  which  alone  the  love  of 
Lumiere  and  D'evouement,  the  very  existence  of  any 
spirituality  at  all,  could  ever  have  arisen,  and  can  ever 
take  significance. 

It  is  probably  for  such  moments  for  sceptical  and 
lowly  insight  that  M.  Renan  has  been  denounced 
as  nihilistic  and  dilettantish  by  some  of  his  fellow- 
obscurantists,  among  whom  especially  Prof.  William 
James.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  if  there  was  in  Renan 
any  moral  dilettantism,  it  was  precisely  of  the  same 
sort  as  Professor  James'  own  disgust  at  the  mawkishness 
of  an  unheroic  world. 

Such  preachers  of  morality  for  morality's  own  sake 
(as  other  dilettantes  preach  art  for  art's  own),  like  to 
contemplate  heroes,  martyrs,  sages,  supermen  living  off 
ombres  and  ombres  d'une  ombre  as  grosser  persons  like 


The  Syndicalist  Myth 


1 1 1 


to  look  at  prize  milch  cows  or  at  the  forced  and  seedless 
plants  at  a  flower  show.  And  Renan  is  only  the  most 
subtle  and  charming,  precisely  because  the  most 
sceptical  and  self-contradictory,  representative  of  that 
priestly  mind  which  takes  for  granted  that  God,  God 
more,  or  perhaps  less.  Almighty — must  have  the  same 
tasks  as  himself,  and  therefore  have  intended  the 
Universe  for  this  taste's  (a  taste  refined,  ddicat,  a  taste 
in  good  taste  !),  especial  cultivation  and  delectation. 


XVII 

And  naturally,  for,  as  already  remarked,  it  is  the 
especial  vocation  and  business  of  men  like  these  to 
select  and  enrich  the  world's  necessary  growth  of 
virtues.  Indeed — and  now  we  may  return  from  the 
Master  to  the  disciple,  from  Renan  to  M.  Sorel — 
it  seems  just  possible  that  the  philosophical  importance 
of  the  Myth  should  be  sought  in  its  being  not  a  cause,  but 
an  effect.  The  myths  with  which  each  individual 
among  us  consoles  and  urges  on  his  spirit — mjrths  of 
personal  ambition,  activity,  of  loving  and  especially 
being  loved — are,  after  all,  undeniable  symptoms  of 
our  deep  down  needs ;  and  needs,  when  they  do  not 
run  to  waste  in  just  such  myths,  are  the  particles  of 
energy,  whose  summed  up  minuteness  moves,  rends, 
and  reshapes  the  world.    And  similarly  one  may  ask 


;' 


A 


I  12 


Vital  Lies 


whether  the  Christian  myth  and  the  myth  of  1789  have 
not  been  operative  merely  inasmuch  as — well,  as  not 
they,  but  the  needs  and  powers  they  stood  for,  were 
genuine  realities.  Is  not  this  why  M.  Sorel's  syndicalist 
myth  of  the  General  Strike  may  truly  represent  some 
as  yet  indescribable  change  and  improvement  in 
the  condition  of  the  Proletariat?  In  fact,  one 
might  profitably  ask  oneself  whether,  in  the  WiU-to- 
Believe,  the  passive  deciduous  element  is  not  the  Belief, 
and  the  active,  the  creative,  because  real  one,  the  Will 
which  begets  fiction  so  long  as  it  cannot  yet  engender 
reality  ? 

XVIII 

And  to  return  (now  for  the  last  time),  to  M. 
Sorel  and  his  theory  of  myths.  The  interesting,  original 
(and  also  amusing)  peculiarity  about  him  is  that  he 
values  the  Will  to  Believe  just  because  it  does  not  lead 
to  reality.  Let  us  sum  up  his  argument  one  last  time. 
Look  round  the  world.  No  sooner  are  we  face  to  face 
with  reality,  no  sooner  do  we  know  the  true  details  of 
things  and  their  actual  workings,  but  we  have  to 
recognise  that  there  is  only  perf unctoriness,  fraud,  and 
corruption.  Hence  you  can  get  no  great  enthusiastic 
mass-movements,  no  sustained  heroism  and  saintliness 
out  of  any  realisable  projects.  But  myths  have  neither 
details  nor  consequences,  hence  no  drawbacks,  and  the 


I 


The  Syndicalist  Myth       113 

more  you  pursue,  the  further  they  draw  you  on.  Reality 
is  succeeded  by  reality,  each  unsatisfactory,  and  each 
demolished  in  turn.  But  the  myth  eludes  all  assaults, 
and  soars  undiminished  and  undefeated.  Hence  the 
world's  greatest  revolutions :  Primitive  Christianity, 
the  Reformation  and  1789,  have  been  brought  about  by 
belief  in  a  myth.  And  the  next  great  revolution  will  be 
brought  about  by  the  Syndicalist  myth  of  the  Greneral 
Strike. 

Yes;  but  the  Apostles  did  not  preach  that  the 
Coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  was  a  myth  pregnant 
of  other  consequences.  Neither  did  the  first  Protestants 
go  to  the  stake  to  uphold  what  they  knew  to  be  a  mere 
myth  leading  to  the  scission  of  the  Teuton  and  Latin 
worlds  and  the  arrival  of  David  Strauss  and  the  Higher 
Criticism.  Still  less  did  the  men  of  the  Revolution  go 
(and  send  their  neighbour)  to  death  in  hopes  of  the 
establishment  of  a  French  Bourgeois  Monarchy  or  a 
Combes-Briand  Republic.  And  one  wonders  whether 
those  syndicalists  who  read  M.  Sorel's  "Reflexions 
sur  la  Violence"  will  be  quite  as  ready  to  spend 
their  wages  in  preparing  and  keeping  up  strikes  once 
they  have  grasped  that  it  is  the  essence  of  the  General 
Strike  never  to  come  off,  and  the  function  of  the 
Syndicalist  myth  merely  to  replenish  the  world's  supply 
of  early  Christian  or  Cornelian-antique  virtues  ? 


<^ 


tmim 


114 


Vital  Lies 


lII 


XIX 

These  Vital  Lies,  new-fangled  or  old-established,  thus 
pressed  upon  us  by  philosophers,  are  of  the  nature  of 
those  royal  roads  of  which  we  are  told  there  can  be  none 
in  geometry. 

Nor  in  Truth  of  any  kind.  For  royal  roads  are  those 
along  which,  our  wishes  magically  turned  into  horses,  we 
beggars  are  wont  to  ride. 

Viewed  in  this  way  they  become  more  or  less 
sympathetic.  For  they  most  often  represent,  they  and 
all  their  cognate  Utopias  and  panaceas,  the  expression, 
the  passionate  desire  of  some  man  or  men  to  compass, 
single-handed  (and  often  single- witted),  the  reformation 
or  the  preservation  of  the  moral  and  sometimes  of  the 
social  world.  When  a  man  is  generous  enough  to  fix 
his  imagination  upon  some  of  the  vast  stupid  atrocities 
of  human  life  as  it  exists,  the  horror  that  such  things 
should  be,  easily  turns  into  disbelief  of  their  being  even 
temporarily  inevitable.  The  violently  stirred  human 
nature  of  the  looker-on  enlarges,  envelopes,  obscures 
everything,  and  becomes  for  him  nature  herself;  his 
violated  feelings,  the  mere  sample  of  nature's  out- 
raged intentions,  as  when  Tolstoi  tells  us  that  what  he 
felt  on  witnessing  a  guillotining  made  him  understand 
beyond  all  power  of  argument  that  the  infliction  of 
death  on  human  beings  must  be  wrong ;   whereas  the 


The  Syndicalist  Myth       1 1 5 

right  and  wrong  of  that,  as  of  other  action,  can  be 
decided  only  by  comparing  the  possible  horrors  avoided 
with  the  evident  horror  committed.    All  of  us  who  have 
ever  been  decently  young  must  recollect  similar  episodes, 
where  the  overwhelming  of  our  own  feelings  has  brought 
with  it  the  conviction  that  there  must  be  some  way  out  of 
it,  and  bid  us  burst  our  hearts  and  brains  till  that  way 
was  found.    Now  a  way  out  of  many,  perhaps  most,\ 
abominations  there  very  probably  is:  the  gradual,! 
steady  impinging  of  fact  on  fact,  of  interest  on  interest, 
and  will  on  will,  which  infinitely  slowly,  but  inevitably 
rolls  away  the  various  loads  of  human  horror.    And 
optimism  consists  in  recognizing  that,  however,  in- 
finitesimal the  share  of  ourself  and  our  day,  we  can 
each  of  us  contribute  our  microscopic  will  towards  the 
purpose ;    indeed  that  the  less  each  one  of  us  can 
singly  do,  the  more  need  that  each  should  singly  do  it. 
But  that  is  a  recognition  which  comes  (sometimes,  alas, 
only  with  our  own  diminished  vitality),  when  we  notice 
that  there  is  not  one  evil  only  to  combat,  but  a  hundred, 
and  that  concentration  on  one  may  neglect  and  even 
increase  the  others.    Now  the  minds  seeking  for  royal 
roads  see  only  one  direction  in  which  to  go ;  only  one 
goal ;   and  they  become  willing  to  sacrifice  all  other 
goals  and  directions,  nay,  they  become  jealous,  suspicious 
of  every  other  aim  and  every  other  effort.    For  there  is 
furious  envy  and  hatred  in  such  reformers  ;  they  almost 
prefer  Evil  to  other  proposed  Good,  or  other  means  of 


/ 


ii6 


Vital  Lies 


ii.- 

la' 


I 


attaining  good;  see  M.  Sorel's  rage  with  parlia- 
mentary socialism,  with  bourgeois  humanitarians,  with 
anything  that  tends  to  social  reorganization,  otherwise 
than  in  his  own  way.  And  (this  time  tragic  instead  of 
humorous)  think  of  Tolstoi's  destructive  hatred  (of 
him  whose  recipe  was  hving  !)  of  liberalism,  socialism, 
science,  in  fact  all  those  means  towards  his  end  which 
Beemed  an  interference  and  a  criticism  of  his  own 
panacea.  Such  seekers  after  royal  roads  would  make 
the  world  a  wilderness,  and  like  religious  fanatics, 
choke  hell  with  victims  to  keep  their  private  paradise 
select. 

Perhaps,  being  so  opposed  to  the  multiplicity  and 
complexity  of  reality,  such  minds  are  not  really 
dangerous,  and  representing  after  all  one,  however 
warped,  moral  force,  they  may  be  useful.  But  they  are, 
if  we  look  at  them  calmly,  not  (as  I  said)  entirely 
sympathetic,  and  rather  figures  for  farce  or  tragedy — 
(Tolstoi,  the  King  Lear  of  morality !)— good  for  our 
intellectual  entertainment  and  moral  catharsis,  or 
shaking  up  by  pity  and  terror,  rather  than  genuine 
benefactors  of  mankind. 

So  it  seems  to  me. 

But  then,  I  am  the  sort  of  person  who  believes  that 
fallacies  and  myths,  and  even  the  noblest  self-delusions, 
always  leave  a  heavy  debt  to  pay. 


PART  III 


EPILOGUE 


THE  AUTHOR  SOLILOQUIZES 


'» 


THESE  studies  of  what  I  have  called  Vital 
Lies,  have  been  useful  to  myself  by  making 
me  think  as  clearly  as  I  was  able  on  the 
points  where  my  WiU-to-believe  Obscurantists  had 
thought  obscurely  and  ambiguously. 

But  their  chief  value  in  my  own  eyes  is  in  the  trains 
of  thought  which  have  accompanied  my  readings  in 
Pragmatism,  theoretical  and  applied  ;  trains  of  thought 
converging  towards  a  rough  philosophy  of  my  own,  or  at 
least  showing  me  the  gap  which  some  philosophy,  at 
once  natural  and  practical,  must  some  day  fill  up. 

The  following  notes  embody  some  of  these  trains  of 
thought ;  after  discussing  so  long  with  others,  I  owe 
these  the  chance,  and  myself  the  satisfaction,  of  talking 
about  Truths  and  Lies,  Vital  or  otherwise,  on  my  own 
account. 


I 


'M 


/( 


119 


CHAPTER  I 

NOTK 

L  True  in  so  far  as  Misunderstood 

II.  Truths  and  their  Precedence     . 

III.  Why  Vital  Lies  are  called  Vital  Truths 

IV.  Belief  which  is  Doubt 

V.  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt  *.  '. 

VI.  "  Reason  Unreasonable  " 
VII.  Belief  as  Activity  and  Belief  as  Inertness 
VIII.  Socrates  and  the  Tyrants 

IX.  Mid- Victorian  Ethics 

X.  Of  Racial  Instinct  .... 

XL  Of  Private  Cults     .  .  .  .* 

XII.  The  Right  tojDelude 


PAGE 

.  121 
.  123 
.  124 
.  128 
.  131 
.  133 
.  135 
.  136 
.  139 
.  142 
.  145 
.  146 


True  in  so  par  as  Misunderstood 

But,  as  the  heading  of  this  page  will  show  you,  there 
are  kinds  of  truth  not  usually  mentioned  in  polite  society, 
like  other  offspring  of  passion,  ''  natural "  but  not 
"legitimate."  Thus  Mr  Crawley,  we  have  seen,  is 
anxious  that  the  machinations  of  socialists  should  be 
circumvented  by  continued  teaching  of  the  Church 
of  England  catechism,  without  any  footnotes  about 
"Elemental  ideas,"  identifications  of  religions  and 
sexual  instincts,  and  the  use  of  the  Bull  Roarer. 
And  even  the  dignified  candour  of  Father  Tyrrell 


II 


(a 


122 


Vital  Lies 


seems  to  claim  only  that  he  and  his  learned  fellow- 
Modernists  be  allowed  to  believe  whatever  they  do,  while 
the  rest  of  Christendom  is  apparently  to  continue  believ- 
ing .  .  .  well,  whatever  it  is  told.  As  regards  the  Myth 
of  the  General  Strike,  it  would  be  interesting  to  know 
the  theory,  and  also  the  practice,  of  some  Sjmdicalist 
leader  after  study  of  the  "  R^flexons  sur  la  Violence." 
Would  he  feel  himself  justified  in  preaching  Class 
Warfare  to  workmen  who  had  not  studied  M.  Sorel,  or 
not  profited  by  their  study  ? 

In  short,  would  all  these  high-and-wide-minded 
persons  continue  using  words  with  unequivalent  equival- 
ences of  meaning,  employing  phrases  which  subserve 
their  purpose  just  in  so  far  as  they  are  misunderstood  ? 

[In  80  far  forth  true  !  here  is  another  application  for 
Professor  James'  definition.] 

No  two  human  beings,  answer  our  obscurantists,  can 
ever  mean  quite  the  same  thing.  Psychology  teaches  us 
that.  Very  possibly  ;  but  is  the  result  of  this  teaching 
to  be  that  those  who  have  been  taught  it  shall  go  on 
letting  those  who  have  not  learned  this  psychological 
fact  believe  that  in  their  case,  at  least,  human  beings 
not  only  can  mean  just  the  same  thing,  but  actually  do 
mean  it? 

Briefly,  is  our  increasing  discrimination  of  meaning 
to  lead  to  greater  accuracy  and  sincerity,  or  to  greater 
slovenliness  and  double  dealing  ? 

Do  you  remember  Faust's  theological  discussion  with 


Truths  and  their  Precedence   1 2  3 

Gretchen  on  the  garden  bench  ?  He  was  bent  upon 
vulgar  seduction,  and  had  already  sold  his  soul  to  the 
devil  when  he  assured  the  poor  little  girl  that  he  and 
she  had,  au  ford,  the  same  religious  views.  Yet  even 
Faust  being  but  an  eighteenth  century  freethinker,  did 
make  some  difficulties  about  that  word  "  God,"  and 
left  himself  open  to  the  suspicion  that  he  was  no  proper 
Christian. 

Our  latter  day  sages,  abundantly  conscious  of  the 
high  purity  of  their  intentions,  are  less  explicit.  They 
do  not  stickle  at  current  nomenclature,  but  calmly 
found  their  reconstruction  of  society  or  morals  on  what- 
ever convenient  lumps  of  misapprehension  may  be 
furnished  ready  to  their  hand  by  the  World  Spirit,  or 
by  Macrocosmus  in  person. 


n 


Truths  and  their  Precedence 

We  are  so  desperately  persuaded  of  the  supreme 
value  of  Truth  that  we  have  ended  by  thinking  (or 
ruminatingly  taking  for  granted)  that  only  Truth  can 
have  value,  and  therefore  everything  which  is  valuable 
must  be  true. 

Hence  a  complicated  hierarchy  of  truths,  complicated 
like  the  rules  of  precedence  for  marshalling  peers  and 
peers'  sons  and  foreign  ambassadors  into  dinner.     For 


k 


I . 


/ 


1 


124 


Vital  Lies 


instance,  there  is  Moral  Truth,  which  is—Oh,  so  high  I 
Religious  truth  making  it,  nevertheless,  take  a  back  seat. 
There  is  Artistic  truth,  of  which  some  persons  suspect 
that,  being  so  singularly  cavalier  with  things  as  they 
seem  to  the  inartistic  eye,  it  must  be  of  altogether 
superior  rank,  or  else  a  lunatic  or  malefactor. 

There  is  also  Truth,  which  we  not  only  know,  but 
fed,  that  is  to  say,  like,  and  its  double  appeal  must  be 
doubly  true.  In  short,  among  all  these  various  kinds  of 
degrees  of  truth,  there  seems  to  be  only  one  which  all 
thinkers  are  agreed  to  put  into  a  simple  and  lowly  place — 
the  Truth  which,  being  neither  Moral,  nor  Artistic,  nor 
Religious,  neither  higher  nor  double,  does  not  appeal  to 
any  of  our  likings,  but  merely  deals  with  what  things 
insist  on  being. 


in 


Why  Vital  Lies  are  called  Vital  Truths 

And  by  one  of  those  paradoxes  wherein  this  subject 
naturally  abounds,  there  is  one  particular  Vital  Lie  which 
is  oldest,  most  immortal  of  all,  perpetually  reproduced 
under  the  stimulus  of  human  desire.  That  archetype 
of  Vital  Lies  is  the  one  identifying  all  ideas,  notions, 
opinions  found  comfortable  or  beneficial  by  man,  with 
Truth. 

For  Truth  is  a  thing  we  aU  require  to  get  from  our 


Vital  Lies  called  Truths    125 

neighbours ;  and  it  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  thing  our 
neighbours  by  no  means  always  require  to  give  to  us,  so 
we,  by  which  I  mean  that  vague  abstraction  of  change 
and  habit  called  mankind,  have  surrounded  the  giving 
of  truth,  and  finally  truth  itself,  with  a  halo  of  virtue. 
Hence  also,  wanting  it  from  others,  we  grow  to  think 
of  it  as  good  to  give  to  ourselves,  and  by  a  further 
slipshod  transition,  to  think  that  what  it  is  profitable 
for  us  to  give  ourselves,  is  true.  So  we  get  Keats' 
"  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  Beauty,"  and  the  more  French 
and  normative  "  Rien  n'est  beau  que  le  vrai,  le  vrai 
seul  est  aimable  "  of  elegant  Boileau  ;  moreover,  the 
Pragmatists'  less  poetical  definitions,  "  What  it  would 
be  better  for  us  to  think,"  etc.,  which  are  but  the 
paradoxical  summings  up  of  much  religious  habit, 
exemplified  in  Tolstoi's  naif  clamour  that  Science 
should  teach  us  to  he  good ;  exemplified  also  in  the 
theological  identification  of  God  with  truth,  of  anything 
the  Church  finds  opportune  to  teach  with  the  ordy 
Truth,  and  the  consequent  damnation  of  such  persons 
as  obstinately  refuse  to  see  the  Truth. 

All  this  is  due  to  the  value  of  truth-telling  in  social 
relations,  let  alone  that  of  knowing  how  things  truly 
are  in  all  our  practical  dealings.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact 
the  inner  life  of  man,  as  distinguished  from  his  life 
among  material  objects  and  his  fellow  men,  requires  a 
constant  supply  of  what  is  often  not  truth  at  all,  indeed 
occasionally  takes  its  value  from  being  false.    For  the 


(' 


/ : 


■  11  m    I  ■  II 


126 


Vital  Lies 


> 


endurable  cohabitation  of  the  individual  soul  with  its 
own  self  requires  food  for  self-esteem  as  much  as  the 
health  of  the  body  requires  material  sustenance.  Hope 
also  is  wanted,  and  a  degree  of  confidence  in  men  and 
things.  Many  men  have,  however,  lived  without  much 
of  either,  and  even  lived,  glorious  misanthropes  and 
pessimists,  very  comfortably  indeed.  But  no  man 
has  lived  comfortably  without  some  amount  of 
belief  in^-4u%_own_JBa£0|tajace.;  and  the  deadly 
devitilization  of  the  moments  and  days  when  we 
have  starved  for  lack  of  similar  moral  sustenance 
proves  that  no  entire  life  can  ever  do  without 
it.  Such  is  the  faith  without  which  life  is  worthless ! 
And  all  religions  and  religious  persons  have  distorted  the 
need  for  such  faith  in  oneself  into  need  for  faith  in  some- 
thing else.  For  what,  I  wonder,  is  faith  in  the  loving 
kindness  of  God,  His  pleasure  in  our  love,  except  the 
assurance  that  we  are  either  worthy  of  love,  or,  in  the 
case  of  abjectest  self-abasement,  that  we  are  invested 
with  extrinsic  value  by  such  undeserved  concern  for  us  ? 
The  spiritless  wretch  of  Browning's  Instans  Tyrannus, 
is  secure  just  in  proportion  as  he  has  no  power  or  wish 
to  defend  himself. 

"  Did  I  say  '  without  friend  ?  ' 
Say  rather,  from  marge  to  blue  marge 
The  whole  sky  grew  his  targe, 
With  iht  sun's  self  for  visible  boss. 
While  an  arm  ran  across 
Which  the  earth  heaved  beneath  like  a  breast 
Where  the  wretch  was  safe  prest. 


Vital  Lies  called  Truths    127 

Do  you  see  ?    Just  my  vengeance  complete. 
The  man  sprang  to  his  feet. 
Stood  erect,  caught  at  Ood's  skirts,  and  prayed. 
So,  I  tvas  afraid." 

Just  imagine  the  satisfactoriness  of  such  a  view  of 
man's  relations  with  the  Divinity !  Why,  the  Tyrant 
himself  is  quite  delighted  to  tell  us  the  anecdote. 

Now  such  faith  in  our  (however  humble)  importance, 
may,  of  course,  be  founded  upon  reality.  It  may  be  the 
outcome  of  realities,  of  the  mere  obscure  organic 
strugglings  of  bodily  existence  which  we  do  not  recognize 
for  what  they  are,  mankind  mistaking  for  moral  or 
intellectual  importance,  the  mere  insistence  of  vegetative 
growth  or  animal  locomotion  and  animal  appetites. 
But  the  existence  of  this  faith  in  our  importance, 
although  warranted  by  such  organic  realities  (whether 
apparent  or  hidden),  does  not  depend  on  them ;  it 
depends  on  a  need  which,  reality  or  no  reality  warrant- 
ing, produces  it  simply  because  it  is  needed.  Such  is 
the  chief,  the  primaeval  Vital  Lie.  It  may  be  coincident 
with  the  vital  truth,  but  it  is  independent  of  it.  Indeed 
its  main  biological  function  is  that  of  a  weapon,  an 
armour,  a  waterproof,  against  such  truths  as  happen 
not  to  be  vital  or  vitalizing. 

And  this  faith  in  one's  own  importance  (and  what 
can  assert  its  reality  more  tyrannously  than  our  own 
individual  existence  ?)  may  be  eked  out,  given  an 
objective  excuse,  by  our  faith  in  someone  else,  to  whom 
we  attribute  the  importance  we  lack  ourselves :  the 


i  W 


ff  t 


128 


Vital  Lies 


Divinity,  for  instance,  in  the  theological  optimism  of 
Instans  Tyrannus.  Oftener  still— for  we  all  possess 
secondary  religions.  Lares  and  Penates,  more  cherished 
than  the  great  gods— we  obtain  the  needful  faith  by 
belief  in  the  importance  of  something — family,  tribe, 
nation,  creed,  regiment,  or  club — of  which  our  small 
unworthiness  is  a  part.  And  in  each  case  the  belief  in 
this  other  being  or  other  thing,  is  produced  either  by 
exploitation  of  a  truth,  or,  if  more  convenient,  by  the 
mere  employment  of  falsehood.  For  in  this  case — and 
perhaps  in  every  case — we  take  truth  into  account  only 
to  the  extent  to  which  it  may  help  out  or  jeopardize  the 
tissue  of  beliefs  we  happen  to  need,  or  at  least  to  want, 
whether  true  or  not.  Whenever,  as  often  happens,  we 
detect  this  process  in  some  of  our  neighbours,  we  laugh, 
or,  more  humanely,  smile.  But  among  all  the  foolish 
and  wicked  gods  and  goblins  devised  in  our  own  image 
there  seems  to  be  one  lacking ;  the  divinity  who 
beams  benignantly  on  the  uses  to  which  we  put  our 
Olympus. 


\ 


IV 


Belief  which  is  Doubt 


Intimately  connected  with  Truth-which-is-what-it 
would-be-better-for-ufl-to-believe  is  another  Pragmat- 
istic  identification,  which,  for  brevity's  sake,  I  must 


\. 


Belief  which  is  Doubt     129 


allow  myself  to  designate  as  Belief-which-is  Doubt. 
Of  this,  though  not  sunmied  up  under  so  paradoxical 
a  heading,  Professor  James  is  fond  of  telling  us  that  it 
requires  courage,  shows  a  love  of  adventure,  and  to  use 
his  own  words,  appeals  to  a  generous  power  of  risking 
a  little  beyond  the  literal  evidence. 

"  Faith  means;'  he  writes  ("  Will  to  Believe,"  p.  90), 
**  belief  in  something  concerning  which  doubt  is  still 
theoretically  possible,  and  as  the  test  of  belief  is  the 
willingness  to  act,  one  may  say  that  faith  is  the  readiness 
to  act  in  a  cause  the  prosperous  issue  of  which  is  not 
certified  to  us  in  advance.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  same  moral 
quality  which  we  call  courage  in  practical  affairs.  And 
there  is  a  very  widespread  tendency  in  men  of  vigorous 
nature.^'' 

Well,  in  this  sentence,  as  in  so  many  similar 
ones,  there  is  the  not-unpragmatistic  equivocation 
and  ambiguity-mongering  in  the  use  of  that  word 
Faith. 

One  of  the  meanings  of  Faith,  of  course,  implies  the 
willingness  to  assume  the  attitude  of  belief  when  belief 
is  not  really  forthcoming.  A  person  says :  "  Will 
you  have  faith  in  me  ? "  meaning,  "  Will  you 
trust  me  ?  Will  you  risk  giving  your  time,  your 
money,  your  trouble,  your  affections,  as  if  you  were 
certain  that  in  thus  giving  them  to  me  they 
were  safe."  In  this  sense  Faith  is  a  substitute  for 
Belief,  as  credit  is  a  substitute  for  wealth.    But  the  fact 


l\ 


I30 


Vital  Lies 


of  the  substitution  shows   that   the  two  things  are 
separate. 

On  the  other  hand  we  may  say  :  "  I  have  faith  in 

his  word,"  meaning,  "  I  actually  believe  him  incapable 

of  telling  me  a  lie."    In  this  second  sense.  Faith  is 

identical  with  Belief.    And  it  is  in  this  second  sense  that 

people  have  faith  in  religion,  on  the  occasions  (which 

are  indeed  rare  among  our  latter  day  obscurantists), 

when  they  have  got  religious  faith.     Now  in  this  latter 

case  there  is  ru)  risk  run,  and  there  is  no  courage  about 

the    business.     On    the   other   hand,    when   there   is 

conscious  risk,  and  in  proportion  as  this  risk  is  known  to 

be  risky,  there  is  boldness,  but  there  is  also  lack  of  belief, 

or  more  precisely,  what  belief  there  is  about  something 

else  ;  for  in  this  risky  kind  of  faith  the  belief  consists  not 

in  thinking  that  the  friend  cannot  tell  lies,  the  bank 

cannot  be  insolvent,  or  Heaven  and  Hell   turn  out 

figments,  but    in  thinking  that    such  things  may  be 

but  that  contrariwise  they  may  also  not  be,  and  [a 

different  added  belief]  that  taken  all  round,  for  some 

reason  of  fitness  to  our  temper,  of  saving  of  time  and 

securing  of  opportunity,  or  as  in  Pascal's  famous  wager, 

a  reason  of  comparison  between  possible  gains  and  losses 

— ^which  reason,  whatever  it  is,  is  believed  in  quite  bona 

fide — one  of  the  two  possible  alternatives  is  better  to 

face  than  the  other.    Such  a  choice  between  alternatives 

may  imply  courage  if  the  odds  are  great,  or  imply 

prudence  if  the  odds  are  small,  and  whether  great  or 


The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt    131 

small,  it  implies  the  taking  of  a  risk.  But  this  taking 
of  a  risk  can  exist  only  if  there  is  not  belief  in  there 
being  no  alternative.  In  other  words  risk  implies 
doubt  as  to  which  of  two  or  more  possibilities  will  turn 
out  true  and  force  itself  eventually  on  our  belief,  and  it 
is  this  form  of  doubt  which  obscurantists,  as  here 
exemplified  by  Professor  James,  call  belief.  The  con- 
juring trick  is  done  as  follows  :  Belief  is  shown  to  be,  in 
several  cases,  as  when  we  say  "  I  have  faith  in  his 
word  "  the  same  thing  as  Faith  ;  Faith  is  shown  to  be, 
in  several  cases  (which  are  precisely  those  where  there 
can  be  no  belief),  the  taking  of  a  risk.  Therefore, 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  you  see  that  Belief  is  the  taking 
of  a  risk. 

And  all  the  time  that  Belief  which  is  consciously 
taking  a  risk  has  a  name  of  its  own  :  it  is  Doubt, 


The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt 

Much  of  the  discussion  of  Will-to-Believe  arises,  I 
am  inclined  to  think,  not  merely  from  the  slovenly  use 
of  the  word  Belief,  but  also  from  the  fact  that  much 
which  is  nowadays  called  religious  belief  is  not  Belief 
at  all.  Indeed  it  might  more  correctly  be  termed 
Doubt,  because  it  is  an  alternation,  a  "forse  che  is 


II 


L"v, 


■*—*» 


132 


Vital  Lies 


foree  che  no,"  of  recognized  possibilities,  or  at  the 
utmost,  of  probabilities.  There  may  be  Heaven  and 
Hell,  a  Personal  Divinity,  Christ  may  have  been  God, 
the  Church  may  know  more  about  it  than  other  folk,  the 
Pope  may  be  infallible,  the  may  he  testifying  to  the 
presence  in  our  mind  of  a  may  not.  This  is  a  condition 
of  Doubt,  and  in  the  ages  of  bona  fide  belief,  it  was 
recognized  as  such,  and  as  such  experienced  as  a 
torture  and  fought  against  as  a  peril,  although  it  now 
does  duty  as  Belief.  What  turns  such  Doubt  into  the 
thing  modem  believers  call  Belief  is  either  the  con- 
sideration that  it  is  safer  to  act  as  if  one  did  believe, 
namely,  go  to  Church,  partake  in  the  sacraments,  avoid 
heretical  discourse,  etc.,  because  doing  so  may  prove 
a  gain  and  cannot  prove  a  loss.  Or  real  Doubt  may  be 
turned  into  apparent  belief  for  another  reason  and  by 
another  process,  namely,  the  comfortableness  of  a  point 
of  view,  the  pleasantness  of  a  certain  thought  habitually 
indulged,  as  I  may  reiterate  to  myself  the  thought 
that  "  Grod's  sun's  in  the  sky,  all's  right  in  the  world," 
or,  "  il  faut  cultiver  notre  jardin,"  because  one  of  these 
views  is  suitable  and  pleasant  for  my  contemplation. 
But  this  kind  of  "  Belief  "  is  very  different  from  the 
belief  in  something  being  true,  for  instance,  the  belief 
in  fire  burning  in  the  abstract,  or  a  concrete  fire  having 
burnt  a  concrete  house.  Now  it  was  in  this  latter  sense 
that  Dante  believed  in  Hell  Fire  in  general,  and  the 
burning  of  his  pet  evil-doers  in  particular. 


Reason   Unreasonable      133 

This  modem  shifting  of  the  word  "Belief"  to 
designate  a  state  of  Doubt,  has  brought  with  it  the 
misapplication  also  of  the  word  Disbelief.  In  our  latter 
day  parlance  a  Disbeliever  or  Unbeliever  means  one 
who  denies  ;  and  Religious  doubts  mean  at  the  very  least 
a  beginning  of  denial,  an  altemation  of  denial  and 
aflSrmation.  With  such  a  conception  of  Belief,  it  is 
easy  to  imderstand  how  Belief  may  be  regarded  as  a 
matter  of  deliberate  choice  ;  and  may  even  be  credited 
with  a  power  of  influencing  the  realization  of  its  object. 
For  if  you  fix  your  mind  upon  the  altemative,  and 
entirely  exclude  the  opposite,  you  may,  in  certain  cases, 
increase  by  your  steady  push  the  chances  of  the  chosen 
altemative.  Only,  if  you  are  aware  of  this  little  opera- 
tion on  your  own  part,  you  are  reaUy  believing  not  in 
that  altemative  being  certain,  but  only  in  its  being 
possible.  In  fact,  you  are  in  doubt  as  to  what  the 
future  has  in  store,  and  you  are  giving  yourself  and 
your  hoped  for  altemative  the  benefit  of  the  doubt  in 
that  very  act  of  "  Belief." 


VI 


"Reason  Unreasonable 


»j 


All  this  matter  of  Belief  which  is  Doubt  is  due  to  one 
of  those  many  imperfections  of  logical  thought  about 


i 


'\ 


f 


i'  ^ 


h\/ 


t 


134 


Vital  Lies 


which  Obscurantistfl  are  so  constantly  eloquent.  Or, 
more  strictly,  it  is  due  not  to  thought  being  over 
logical,  but  to  thinkers  being  too  slovenly  to  examine 
into  what  they  are  thinking  about ;  the  logical  nexus  is 
not  to  blame,  but  the  logic  being  applied  to  words 
whose  meaning  is  perpetually  shifted. 

For  the  great  drawback  of  all  thought,  and  more 
especially  of  thought's  verbal  expression,  is  that  thought 
is  necessarily  always  moving  and  shifting.  We  are,  so 
to  speak,  always  thinking  of  some  other  point  or  from 
some  other  point.  And  thought  is  also  moving  from 
different  points.  We  are  always  thinking  in  com- 
parisons, in  exclusions  and  negations ;  we  are  always 
imphcitly  thinking  in  expectations  :  Syrup  of  Tamarind 
may  be  thought  of  as  sour,  or  a  room  heated  to  60°  as 
cM,  because  we  have  started  from  an  expectation  that 
syrup  means  a  predominance  of  sugar,  and  heated  rooms 
mean  such  that  we  take  off  our  outer  garments.  Given 
the  starting  point  that  willows  are  green,  we  may  say 
that  these  particular  willows,  in  this  particular  light,  are 
pink,  meaning  thereby  that  there  is  a  very  small 
admixture  of  pink  in  their  green,  and  that  we  distinguish 
their  greenness  from  other  greenness  by  this  tiny 
amount  of  pinkness.  We  usually  know  what  we  are 
talking  about.  But  it  does  happen  occasionally  that  a 
painter  fixes  his  attention  upon  the  newly  discovered 
(therefore  interesting)  pinkness,  and  consequently 
paints  you  willows  which  are  pink  in  the  sense  of  pink 


t 


Activity  and  Inertness    135 

roses.  And  what  this  impressionist  used  to  do  in  my 
young  days,  we  thinkers  and  we  talkers  are  perpetually 
doing  in  our  discussions,  adding  to  our  well-established, 
and,  may  I  say,  Socratic  slovenliness,  the  new-fangled 
slovenliness  of  falling  foul  of  thought  because  we  do  not 
happen  to  think  correctly. 

Moreover,  we  are  perpetually  and  legitimately  shuff- 
ling the  present  and  the  future,  and  (not  legitimately, 
but  very  naturally)  forgetting  that  we  have  thus 
shuffled.  Forgetting  that  the  present  is  turning  into 
past  and  the  future  into  present  even  while  we  think  of 
them,  so  that  when  we  remark,  as  is  fashionable  nowa- 
days, that  belief  can  create  its  own  object,  we  forget  that 
if  the  belief  did  the  creating,  why  then,  before  that 
creating  had  been  done  the  belief  was  not  true,  but  false. 

Similarly,  and  for  most  obvious  reasons,  we  hasten 
to  say  that  the  human  intellect  is  but  a  poor  thing, 
because  we  have  experienced  in  our  person,  and  more 
frequently  those  of  our  opponents,  that  human  beings 
are  rather  poor  in  intellect. 


VII 


Belief  as  Activity  and  Belief  as  Inertness 

There  may  be  dignity,  and  even  a  certain  safety,  in  a 
delusion,  if  by  delusion  we  mean  such  as  are  begotten  by 


H 


'A\ 


136 


Vital  Lies 


the  demands  of  our  nature,  for  then  they  represent,  in 
proportion  to  their  strength,  a  portion  of  reality,  that  of 
a  want,  a  manner  of  feeling,  of  living,  a  necessity  and  a 
force  ;  they  represent  oneself. 

But  is  it  not  different  with  the  mere  lazy  imitation 
of  other  folks'  and  other  times',  often  misunderstood, 
formulae  of  experience  or  desire  ?  For  that  is  mere 
taking  for  granted.  We  take  for  granted  everything 
that  is,  I  will  not  say  pleasant  or  profitable,  but  easy, 
what  costs  no  effort  to  face.  We  take  for  granted  that 
we  ourselves  are  normal,  that  others  are  normal, 
that  things  are  arranged  to  suit  us,  until  we  are  bruised 
by  the  contrary.  We  continue,  despite  all  bruisings,  to 
think  that  we  are  likely  to  be  in  the  right,  and  that 
what  we  dislike  is  likely  to  be  wrong. 

All  this  is  largely  negative,  lack  of  activity  and  of 
organization,  weakness,  not  strength.  And  from  this 
arise  the  Lies  which,  far  from  being  Vital,  are  necessarily 
killed  off  by  the  process  of  living,  the  Lies  which  try  to 
stop  the  process  of  living,  to  clog  it  with  their  presence. 


VIII 

Socrates  and  the  Tyrants 

Half  truths,  confusions,  transparent  sophisms,  can, 
when  they  suit  the  unconscious  convenience  of  mankind, 


I 


(li 


k 


i^' 


Socrates  and  the  Tyrants    137 

turn  into  what  M.    Fouillee  has  taught  us  to  call 
Idees-Forces.     Thus,    for   instance,    the   sophism   of 
Socrates,  in  the  Gorgias,  insisting  and  persisting  (and  by 
what  a  chain  of  argument !)  that  virtite  and  happitiess 
are  one  and  the  same  thing  ;  and  Tolstoi's  newer  (or  in 
its  Buddhistic  essence  far  older)  sophism  identifying 
Life  with  the  Life  of  Mankind,  and  the  happiness  of  the 
individual  with  that  of  the  race.    Socrates  was  confus- 
ing one  single  desideratum  with  that  possession  of  many 
desiderata,  including    freedom   to  do  as  we  choose, 
which  is  one  of  the  causes  of  happiness.    Meanwhile, 
CalMcles  and  the  Tyrants  happened  not  to  consider 
virtue  aa  the  one  thing  necessary  for  their  happiness, 
they  preferred  power,  and  went  on  being  happy  viciously 
in  the  teeth  of  Socrates.    Similarly,  in  the  teeth  of 
Tolstoi,  the  happiness  of  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
out  of  a  thousand  human  beings  (and  perhaps  Tolstoi's 
own,  when  he  was  not  thinking  about  such  questions), 
has  consisted  and  consists  in  dozens  of  things  besides 
the  sense  of  communion  with  God  and  of  common  life 
with  mankind.    Sophisms,  both,  ombres  d^une  ombre,  as 
Renan  would  have  said,  and  you  might  add,  with  the 
peculiarity  so  remarkable  in  shadows,  of  magnifying, 
but  also  distorting,  even  to  caricature  and  monstrosity, 
the  solid,  small,  decent  reality  behind  them.    Shadows, 
and  grotesque  ones,  yet  which,  even  as  Renan  expresses 
it,  have  been  lived  on  by  humankind — ^lived  upon,  how- 
ever, in  conjunction  with  the  very  substantial  reality 


I 


I 


y 


138 


Vital  Lies 


11 


they  contradict.  Or  rather,  perhaps,  promissory  notes, 
assignats  like  those  current  during  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, with  very  little  cash  behind  them,  yet  forming  a 
system  of  national  credit,  and  enabling  you  to  buy  a 
penn'orth  of  bread  in  return  for  a  promise  of  ten 
thousand  francs. 

The  sophism  of  Socrates,  and  the  sophism  renewed 
by  Tolstoi,  have  tended  rather  to  their  own  realization 
than  to  the  contrary,  because  the  convenience  of  many 
individuals,  co-operating  unconsciously  and  selecting 
automatically,  has  chosen  to  give  them  credit.  Man- 
kind made  it  easier  and  easier  to  identify  Socratic  virtue 
with  happiness,  by  giving  those  who  had  not  got  it  an 
unpleasant  reputation,  and  an  imeasy  conscience, 
which  both  disturbed  what  other  happiness  they  had. 
Similarly  social,  or  rather  racial,  advantage  has  also 
made  it  easier  (or  at  least  less  difficult),  to  identify  the 
bulk  happiness  of  life  with  a  constantly  trained  and  ever 
growing  sense  of  obedience  to  the  will  of  God,  until  we 
have  got  men  like  Tolstoi  and  his  kind,  in  whom  happi- 
ness can  be  destroyed  by  lack  of  that  sense  of  living  in 
God's  ways. 

The  usefulness  of  one-sided  views,  of  sophisms  like 
these  of  Socrates  and  Tolstoi,  depends  not  on  their  being 
of  mythical  nature,  but  on  the  prosaic  fact  that  man- 
kind is  perpetually  transposing  the  objects  of  its 
desires,  the  ingredients  of  its  happiness  ;  exchanging  the 
emotions  attached  to  various  realities  and  ideas,  or 


Mid- Victorian  Ethics     139 

rather  attaching  different  kinds  and  degrees  of  emotion 
to  the  same  things  and  the  same  ideas :  substituting 
pleasure  in  the  means  for  pleasure  in  the  end,  sub- 
stituting pleasure  in  relief  from  pain  for  pleasure  as 
such,  and  pleasure  in  power,  in  sympathy,  in  conformity, 
or  in  rebellion,  for  pleasure  in  the  things  which  power, 
sympathy,  conformity,  or  rebellion  can  obtain. 

Commandments  and  ideals  are  among  the  automatic 
mechanism  of  such  unceasing,  unintentional  transposi- 
tion and  transformation  of  desires  and  efforts.  And 
by  the  associative  virtue  of  mere  words,  the  drum-or- 
church-bell-power  of  often  repeated  phrases,  sophisms 
have  acquired  still  more  of  the  utility  of  promissory 
notes,  lying  statements  if  taken  literally,  but  with  a 
humble  use  of  eking  out  credit  among  a  race  of  beings 
still  very  lacking  in  the  substantial  wealth  of  knowledge 
and  self-control. 


IX 


Mid- Victorian  Ethics 


Attempting  (though  the  reader  may  scarcely  believe 
it)  to  take  a  brief  agaiast  myself  and  do  justice  to  ideas 
similar  to  those  of  Mr  Crawley,  I  have  been  reading 
over  again  some  notes  of  conversations  with  a  very 
typical  English  moralist  of  the  Mid- Victorian  School,  a 
moralist  who  is  (and  'tis  the  most  genuine  kind)  merely 


140 


Vital  Lies 


an  intelligent  old  lady,  having  sufiered  much  and  helped 
much,  and  whose  notions  have  stood  the  test  of  such 
suffering  and  helping.     There  is  much  to  commend 
her  views,  if  one  may  call  views  what  consists  very 
largely  in  blinking  and  even  turning  one's  back  on  what 
there  is  to  see.     This  straightlacedness  has  dignity, 
simplicity,  practicality,  a  sort  of  manliness,  by  the  side 
of  which  foreign  and  latter-day  width  of  sleeve  seems 
futile  and  also  decidedly  plebeian.     Compared  with 
their    venerable  British  copy-book  of  beautiful  call- 
graphical  precepts  and  fair  blank  pages,  the  kind  of 
literature  typified  (leaving  contemporaries  alone),  by 
Rousseau's  Confessions  or  Stendhal's  novels,  is  foul  and 
depressing  reading.     Among  the  headings  in  this  living 
book   of   practical   morals,   constantly   repeated   and 
deserving  of  such  honour,  I  find  the  principle  that  self- 
denial  is  the  highest  wisdom,  and  that  the  human  soul  is 
never    the    loser    for    any   constraint    or    mutilation 
accomplished  on  itself  ;  that  a  man,  especially  a  woman, 
is  the  happier,  or  at  least  the  more  efficient,  for  every  no 
said  to  the  self.    Of  course,  in  point  of  fact,  this  no  is 
limited  in  the  main  to  would-be  breaches  of  the  Seventh 
Commandment,  and  we  hear  comparatively  little  of  no 
to  ambition,  pride,  desire  for  wealth,  and  still  less  of  no 
to  desire  for  domestic  peace  and  apparent  decorum ; 
but  the  principle  is  tacitly  supposed  to  have  been 
applied  to  other  evil  possibilities.     Or  rather  it  is  taken, 
for  granted  that  other  evil  possibilities  cannot  intrude 


Mid- Victorian  Ethics     141 

into  decent  society,  and  that  only  decent  society  exists 
for  decent  contemplation. 

As  I  listen,  evening  after  evening,  to  anecdotes  and 
judgments  embodying  these  aristocratic  views  of  the 
most  aristocratic  of  all  peoples,  to  wit,  ourselves,  I 
feel,  as  I  said,  that  everything  else,  Ibsenian  notions  for 
instance,  are  oddly  tentative,  and  oddly  compounded  of 
furtiveness  and  aggression ;  there  is  no  foretelling 
them,  no  order  about  them,  whereas  this  tory  morality 
is  order  and  nothing  but  order.  It  has  a  divine  righty 
not  to  say  a  divine  certainty  about  it.  It  is  only  little  by 
little  I  begin  to  suspect  its  very  human,  even  very  much 
too  human,  origin.  Its  one-sidedness  and  hard-and- 
fastness  reveal  it  to  be  one  of  the  many  illusions  arising 
from  hurry  and  hurried  convenience.  Despite  all  its 
airs  of  unselfishness,  and  even  of  self-immolation,  it 
makes  daily  life  easier,  less  responsible,  lazier,  for  it 
makes  judgment  simpler  and  quicker  at  the  expense  of 
truth.  Indeed,  when  I  look  at  it  closely,  it  is  rough  and 
ready,  and  ruthless,  denying  all  appeal  to  the  creature 
judged,  allowing  every  degree  of  hurry  and  slovenliness 
to  the  judges  :  it  savours  of  the  court-martial.  .  .  . 

And  this  leads  me  to  reflect  (though  I  do  not  com- 
municate my  reflections  to  my  venerable  friend)  that 
moral  codes  are,  after  all,  not  much  finer  than  the 
economic  methods  which  they  accompany,  and,  like 
these,  they  are  often  sadly  wasteful  and  productive  of 
shoddy  and  refuse-heaps.    But  they  are  the  short  cut, 


i 


^ 


■«IWllPii 


Pi 


142 


Vital  Lies 


at  the  time  they  arise,  to  some  absolute  necessary  of 
social  life.  They  sacrifice  a  portion  of  truth,  they  blink 
some  part  of  reality,  and  every  such  disregard  of  truth 
entails  (however  inevitable)  a  sacrifice  of  many 
individuals  and  their  powers  for  good :  the  Magdalen, 
had  she  been  duly  stoned  for  her  adulteries,  would 
neither  have  brought  her  ointment  for  Christ's  feet, 
nor  watched,  as  we  see  her  on  the  frescoes,  by  the  side 
of  the  cross.  And  here  comes  another  illusion  due  to 
life's  roundabout  practicality,  the  brutal  need,  the 
stupid  barbarous  hurry,  which  has  produced  such  im- 
perfect codes,  manages  also  by  unconscious  adjustment 
to  surround  them  with  loyalty,  love,  and  awe.  And 
the  more  imperfect  our  ethics,  the  more  they  are 
safeguarded  in  our  hearts  and  imaginations  by  the 
reluctance  to  question,  the  horror  of  disobeying. 


X 


Op  Racial  Instinct 

Certain  obscurantists  (of  the  Crawley  type)  find  a 
practical  proof  of  the  utility  of  superstitions,  in  the 
almost  animal  anxiety  displayed  in  guarding  religious 
and  ethical  premisses  from  enquiry  and  criticism. 
Bad  as  are  the  quarrels  of  men  of  science  and  of 
artists,  these  are  confined  to  the  interested  specialists, 


Of  Racial  Instinct       143 


and  the  rest  of  mankind  do  not  tear  each  other 
to  pieces  about  Post-Impressionism  or  the  trans- 
mission of  acquired  characteristics.  It  is  only  about 
religious  and  moral  questions  (patriotism  in  its  various 
modem  aberrations  partaking  of  both)  that  we 
find,  in  the  field  of  mere  belief  and  opinion,  such 
universal  tigress-and-young  fear  and  ferocity.  The 
result,  all  this,  jubilate  our  obscurantists,  and  the 
proof  also,  of  a  Rcu^ml  Instinct  defending  these  matters ! 
Possibly;  but  in  that  case  how  does  your  Racial 
Instinct  set  to  work  ?  And  ought  it  not  to  have  re- 
sulted in  the  survival  of  fetichism  and  taboo,  or  at  least 
the  disappearance  of  the  races  who  first  got  rid  of  such 
useful  superstitions  ? 

Instead  of  Racial  Instinct,  so  plentifully  invoked 
(like  every  word  compounded  of  those  great  Xs 
Race  and  Races)  nowadays,  is  it  not  possible  that  the 
persistence  of  superstitions  and  superstitious  attitudes 
may  be  explained  by  a  mere  individual  instinct  of  which 
daily  life  furnishes  many  examples  :  the  instinct  to 
avoid  taking  trouble  ?  And  is  not  such  conservatism 
bom  of  lazy  convenience  of  ready-made  rules  and 
averages ;  of  the  hurried  or  wearied  reluctance  to  verify 
one's  compass;  of  the  discomfort,  sometimes  the 
paralysing  discomfort,  of  readjusting  opinions  and 
conduct ;  in  fact,  bom  of  inertness  such  as  makes  the 
poor  sluggard  suffer  agonies  at  being  waked,  and  turn 
desperately  on  to  thq  other  ear  ? 


amm 


mmmam 


144 


Vital  Lies 


PerliapB  the  obscurantists  might  answer  that  inert- 
ness, fatigue,  sluggishness,  are  themselves  Racial 
advantages  and  due  to  the  great  Racial  Instinct. 
Shall  we  conclude  that  if  people  had  been  more 
alacritous  and  elastic,  the  human  race  would  have 
ceased  to  have  offspring,  been  gobbled  up  by 
Palaeolithic  monsters,  or  (what  obscurantists  might 
like  even  less),  that  its  finer  varieties,  for  instance  the 
noble  Aryan,  would  have  philosophized  themselves 
into  non-resistance  against  the  Negro,  or  even  (what 
Gobineau  did  indeed  allege  against  the  ancestors  of 
Plato  and  of  Pheidias),  into  intermarriage  with  the 
Semite  ?  This  leads  to  the  dilemma,  either  that  the 
superior  sub-race  was  not  superior  in  intelligence  and 
adaptive  power,  or,  that  too  much  superiority  may  be  a 
bad  thing  ;  with  the  manifest  corollary  that  a  dash  of 
the  negro,  a  preponderance  of  the  Semite,  might  have 
done  the  nobler  Aryan  races  a  world  of  good. 

The  proposition  that  prejudices  have  been  necessary 
for  keeping  up  the  standard  or  strain  of  superiority,  would 
thus  require  eking  out  by  a  counter  proposition  that 
prejudices  must  he  broken  through  to  diminish  that  un- 
practical superiority.  And  both  propositions  would 
require  the  supplement  of  a  remarkably  terre  d  terre 
statement,  namely :  Prejudices  are  sometimes  useful 
and  are  sometimes  mischievous.  Or,  put  in  more 
dignified  language,  superstition  may  be  the  result  of 
Racial  Instinct,  but  if  that  be  the  case,  then  another 


■3te 


Of  Private  Cults 


i^fa 


145 


result  of  Racial  Instinct  is  the  rebellious  criticism  of 
that  selfsame  superstition. 

So  perhaps  it  is  wiser,  let  alone  more  modest,  not  to 
let  Racial  Instinct,  that  vast  smoky  genius,  out  of  his 
allegorical  bottle.  The  persons,  however,  who  insist 
upon  having  dealings  with  Racial  Instinct,  do  not  regard 
that  huge  personification  as  at  all  able  to  take  care  of 
bimself,  at  least  not  nowadays.  In  any  case  they— 
these  philosophers  both  of  the  Crawley  and  the  Sorel 
type— seem  always  ready  to  lend  him  a  hand  in 
keeping  up  old  superstitions  or  fabricating  new  ones. 


XI 


Op  Private  Cults 

De  quoi  vivra-Uon  aprda  noiiaf 

AU  this  latter-day  talk  of  the  educative  power  of 
religious  and  patriotic,  and  now,  of  socialistic  delusions, 
this  everlasting  fear  that  the  human  soul  may  starve 
for  lack  of  vital  lies.  .  .  . 

But  are  we  not  many,  most,  perhaps  all  of  us,  brought 
up  (those  educable  at  all)  by  delusions  of  a  less  public 
kind,  myths  uncatalogued  of  historians  and  sociolo- 
gists ?  educated  by  phantom  teachers,  friends,  parents, 
lovers,  made  up  by  our  own  creative  needs  out  of  a 
,'few,  often  misunderstood,  indications  ?    Nay,  I  incline 


146 


Vital  Lies 


to  think  that  these  hidden  episodes  of  the  inner  life 
(when  we  have  eyes  to  see  them)  may  teach  us  by 
analogy  wherein  lies  the  true  power  of  other  beneficent 
delusions  :  in  the  fact  of  their  being  ours.  The  parent 
whose  word  is  law,  the  friend  we  blush  to  disappoint, 
and  the  Godhead  to  whom  we  dedicate  our  efforts  and 
sacrifices,  are,  after  all,  consubstantial  with  those  very 
feelings  of  ours  which  we  attach  to  their  names  ;  they 
are  the  patterns  made  for  ourselves  out  of  the  moral 
substance  which  we  try,  for  days  or  years,  or  for  a  life- 
time, to  fashion  in  their  image.  It  is  surely  a  curious 
proof  of  our  unwillingness  to  recognize  these  fruitful 
self-deceptions  that  the  novel,  so  far  as  I  know,  has 
hitherto  not  dealt  with  this  large  side  of  life  and  life's 
romance  and  tragedy,  namely,  our  education  by  parents, 
and  lovers,  and  friends,  who  have  never  really  existed 
save  in  our  own  loving  imagination. 


XII 


The  Right  to  Delude 

On  the  undeniable  fact  that  half  of  our  beliefs  result 
from  mere  personal  or  collective  passion,  habit,  and  con- 
venience, latter-day  Obscurantism  founds  its  modest 
claim  to  believe  useful  and  consoling  things  which  do 
not  happen  to  impose  themselves  on  our  reason  as  true. 


The  Right  to  Delude    147 

But  beyond  this  point  it  passes  immediately  to  the  right 
of  teaching  such  desirable  things  which  we  ourselves 
cannot  believe,  but  other  persons  luckily  still  can.  If 
you  and  I  see  no  good  reason  why  virtue  and  vice 
should  get  their  deserts  in  Heaven  and  Hell,  it  does  not 
very  often  happen  that  the  advantageous  results  of 
such  a  doctrine  enable  us  to  believe  it.  But  'tis  a  fact 
of  daily  occurrence  that  these  advantageous  results 
induce  us  to  teach  eternal  punishment  to  those  who  do 
not  ab-eady  disbelieve  in  it ;  or  at  all  events  to  oppose 
ourselves  to  anything  that  should  awaken  such  disbelief. 
And  from  the  right  to  teach  or  abet  the  teaching  of 
what  we  cannot  ourselves  believe,  Obscurantism  goes 
one  step  furtner,  to  the  diUy  of  doing  so.  For  in 
the  eyes  of  Mr  Crawley  and  M.  Sorel,  those  twins 
(all  unsuspicious  of  their  twinship)  bom  of  M.  Renan 
and  his  own  imaginary  Abbess  of  Jouarre,  it  is 
evidently  a  sacred  duty  to  teach  the  Church  of  England 
catechism  to  the  lower  classes,  or  to  help  Syndicalist 
agitators  to  lead  the  credulous  French  working-man  by 
the  nose. 

In  this  propaganda  of  Vital  Lies,  lies  the  chief  danger 
and  odium  of  such  applied  Pragmatism  ;  in  this  zeal  for 
the  moral  edification  of  others,  rather  than  in  any 
individual  paltering  with  truths,  of  which  every  one  of 
us  ab-eady  unsuspectingly  carries  on  about  as  much  as  is 
possible.  Moreover,  besides  the  intellectual  objection 
to  such  Obscurantism  there  is  a  moral,  that  is  to  say,  a 


( 


) 


148 


Vital  Lies 


social  one.  Deceiving  a  man  is  tampering  with  his 
property,  and  jeopardizing  his  freedom.  It  is  taking  an 
undue  advantage,  accepting  the  principle  of  fair  play  and 
not  plajdng  fair.  For  we  cannot  teach  what  we  know  to 
be  a  myth  or  a  fallacy,  without  first  making  those 
whom  we  teach  believe  in  the  good  faith  we  are  breaking. 


s 


CHAPTEB  II 

MOTE  PAQB 

I.  The  Rehabilitation  of  Obscurity         .         .         .  .149 

II.  Why  we  write  Truth  on  our  Signboard        .         .  .   162 

III.  The  Surface  of  Things  and  the  Depths  of  the  Ego  .    155 

IV.  Contact  and  Sight,  Instinct  and  Knowledge          .  .   162 
V.  Bergson's  Direct  Data .166 

VI.  "  Rppa  Passes  " 170 

VIL  "  PluraUstic  Universes  " 171 

VIII.  That  Poor  Drudge,  Reason 173 

IX.  Thought  as  Movement     ......  177 

X.  Reason  as  Revelation       ......  180 

XL  Limitations  of  Thought  and  Limitations  of  Thinkers     .  181 

XII.  Farewell  to  Vital  Lies 182 

XIII.  Vital  Lies  as  the  Handiwork  of  the  Gods    .         .         .  186 


The  Rehabilitation  op  Obscurity 

WE  latter-day  Philosophers  are  obsessed  by 
the  efficacy  of  misconceptions,  mjrths, 
Vital  Lies  avowed  or  unavowable.  It 
is  one  of  those  inevitable  reactions  of  Philosophic 
Thought,  by  which  the  dust-bin  of  facts  and  theories 
discarded  by  one  fashionable  synthesis  becomes  the 
Crusoe's  wreck,  the  treasure-heap  of  contrary 
generalizations;  until  discardings  and  rehabilitations 
having  shifted  and  sifted  every  possible  datum  and 
notion,  the  mind  of  man  may  at  last  learn  a  little  less 

148 


'> 


ISO 


Vital  Lies 


hurry  and  cocksureness.  In  this  manner  the  reaction 
against  Rationalism  (Mill's  as  much  as  Voltaire's) 
bestows  a  pleasing  sense  of  high  breeding  (or  at  least 
gentility)  whenever  we  assert  the  deficencies  and 
limitations  of  Reason.  Our  thought,  whatever  it  is, 
shall  never  be  guilty  of  being  crass !  I  employ  that 
word  because  its  squahd  connotations  bring  home 
our  intention  of  being  on  the  contrary,  select,  initiate, 
esoteric. 

And  we  display,  or  at  least  secretly  enjoy,  our 
initiation  and  esotericism  by  making  light  of  Ration- 
ality and  seating  ourselves  ad  dexteram  of  the  Obscure, 
the  Profound,  better  still,  the  Mystic,  Forces  of  the  Uni- 
verse ;  or,  short  of  that,  converse  with  our  Sub- 
conscious, our  Intuitive  Self,  emerging  from  such  closed- 
door  interviews  with  enigmatic  wisdom  on  our  barely 
unsealed  lips.  Such  is,  thanks  to  historical  reaction,  the 
attitude  of  the  latter-day  philosophic  Beau  Brummel. 

Moreover,  and  quite  apart  from  this,  it  happens  tliat 
certain  studies,  psychology,  mythology,  ethnography, 
sociology,  still  in  their  presumptuous  callowness,  have 
brought  to  our  notice  a  mmiber  of  facts  never  before 
dreamed  of,  and  among  these  we  are  naturally  most 
struck  by  those  most  contradictory  to  what  people 
had  hitherto  supposed.  Here  we  have  another  reason 
for  the  attention  bestowed  on  what,  for  brevity,  I  have 
symbolized  under  Ibsen's  expression  of  Vital  Lies,  and, 
of  course,  for  the  importance  in  all  fashionable  schemes 


' 


^ 


Rehabilitation  of  Obscurity   151 

of  welfare  and  progress,  of  notions  like  Renan's  Ombres 
and  Ombres  d^une  Ombre. 

Now,  far  be  it  from  me  to  deny  the  existence,  even 
the  occasional  advantage,  of  such  Vital  Lies.  All  I 
protest  against  is  our  latter-day  neglect  of  the  every- 
day, humdrum,  taken  for  granted,  paramount  im- 
portance of  Vital  Truths.  We  forget  that  compared 
with  a  substance  a  shadow  is  a  rare  and  negligible 
occurrence  ;  let  alone  that  if  there  were  no  substances 
there  would  be  no  shadows,  no,  nor  shadows  of  shadows 
either. 

For  instance,  we  are  impressed  by  the  primitive 
belief  that  the  success  of  a  bear-hunt  may  depend  upon 
preliminary  abstinence,  chastity,  and  ascetic  practices, 
and  we  recognize  that  such  a  misconception  must  have 
done  much  for  the  moral  habits  and  standards  of  bear- 
hunters.  But  we  overlook,  just  because  we  take  for 
granted,  that  for  one  useful  misconception  there  have 
been  a  hundred  correct  notions  which  have  likewise 
furthered  the  establishment  of  codes  and  habits.  We 
despise  the  familiar  fact  that  every  justified  forecast  or 
analogy,  every  correct  analysis  or  synthesis  (say  that 
the  whole  is  greater  than  its  parts  or  that  similar  causes 
produce  similar  results),  is  creating  a  habit,  an  ideal  of 
intellectual  honesty,  that  every  utensil  manufactured 
or  implement  used  is  teaching  self-restraint,  attention, 
and  thoroughness ;  that  every  barter  or  load  is  establish- 
ing the  sanctity  of  promises ;  nay,  that  no  infant  can  be 


152 


Vital  Lies 


I 


reared  without  a  prodigious  output  of  self-sacrificing 
virtue.     And  as  to  the  tillage  of  the  ground,  what 
myth  has  ever  called  forth  and  consolidated  by  inex- 
orable repetition  so  much  postponement  of   present 
advantage,    so    much     reverent     steadfastness     and 
efficiency,  as  has  this  great  eternal  lesson  that  Nature 
gives  in  proportion  to  man's  best  effort  ?     But  these 
are,  luckily  for  mankind,  everyday,  habitual,  humdrum 
matters.      And    mankind,   especially   Man-of-Letters- 
kind,  is,  by  a  legitimate  fear  of  boring  people,  debarred 
from  calling  attention  to  what  everyone  already  knows. 
Now  philosophers,  ever  since  they  have  ceased  being 
what  used  to  be  called  "  Natural  Philosophers,"  that  is, 
men  of  science,  happen  to  be  men  of  Letters,  and  there- 
fore pursued  by  the  Man  of  Letters'  terror  of  the  Obvious. 


n 


Why  we  write  Truth  on  our  Signboard 

Reading  all  these  ingenious  discussions  of  the  non- 
logical  elements  which  go  to  make  up  our  religious 
beliefs— William  James,  and  Venn  and  TyrreU,  and 
Crawley  and  Sorel— one  point  keeps  striking  me  more 
and  more  :  to  wit,  that  in  the  beliefs  on  which  practical 
action  is  based,  such  elements  are  always  diminished 
and    oftenest    eliminated.     If    the    personality,    the 


Why  we  write  Truth     153 

emotions  and  aspirations  of  the  believer,  were  allowed 
a  voice  in  physics,  nay,  in  the  most  rule-of-thumb 
housewife's  science,  such  as  they  nowadays  claim  for 
themselves  in  religion  and  in  philosophy,  we  should  not 
be  able  to  navigate,  to  tUl  the  ground,  to  breed  cattle,  or 
to  cook  a  meal.  Indeed,  that  the  gradual  weeding-out 
of  such  emotional  reasons  for  belief  has  not  taken  place 
in  religious  and  philosophic  thought,  suggests  (it  seems 
to  me)  that  both  religion  and  philosophy  (or  what  passes 
for  such  talk)  bearing  on  the  practical  life  of  civilized 
men,  that  their  function,  like  that  of  art,  is  to  vent 
impulses,  construct  ideal  frameworks  for  emotion,  and 
thus  conduce  not  to  practical  decisions  but  to  the  soul's 
health  and  well-balanced  activity.  We  are  beginning 
to  recognize  that  certain  among  the  philosophic  writers 
who  have  most  influenced  us,  say  Schopenhauer, 
Carlyle,  Emerson,  Tolstoi,  are  not  so  much  thinkers  as 
poets — lyrists  as  my  friend  Halevy  has  called  one  of 
the  greatest  of  them,  Nietzsche — ^men  who  have  applied 
passionate  temperamental  onesidedness  to  expressing 
the  various  modes  of  spiritual  being  requisite  (all  of 
them)  for  our  complete  and  balanced  emotional  and 
imaginative  life. 

At  that  rate,  you  will  say  (inclining  as  my  reader 
probably  may,  to  side  rather  with  my  adversaries  than 
myself)  at  that  rate,  the  element  of  personality,  of 
desire,  call  it  what  you  choose,  deflecting  our  thought, 
has,  after  all,  a  practical  function  in  our  lives  ?     Un- 


154 


Vital  Lies 


doubtedly ;  but  the  practical  function  belonging  to 
imagination  and  self-expression,  not  to  Truth.  Music, 
for  instance,  has  a  practical,  vital  function  in  wakening 
emotion,  sometimes  to  vent  and  void  it  artificially, 
more  often  (and  in  its  nobler  forms)  to  discipline  and 
purify  it  into  hannony.  Yet  this  very  real  service 
fulfilled  by  music  in  our  individual  and  racial  life,  does 
not  make  us  call  a  Beethoven  quartet  true.  The 
difference  between  art  on  the  one  hand  and  religion 
and  philosophy  on  the  other,  lies  just  in  this,  that  in 
order  to  commend  itself  to  our  acceptance,  art  does 
not  (need  not)  pretend  to  be  more  than  a  pleasure  and 
a  refreshment,  leaving  its  deep  utility  to  individual  and 
race  to  be  deduced  or  guessed  (or  neither)  just  from 
this  modest,  venerable  fact  of  pleasantness.  Whereas 
religion  and  philosophy  (not  always  pleasant)  have 
sprung  originally  from  a  bona  fide  practical  search  for 
truth.  (Why  do  suns  scorch,  and  rains  quicken, 
pestilences  rage  ?  and  so  forth),  and  have  continued 
to  deal  in  truth,  to  say  they  furnish  truth,  long  after 
they  had  made  over  to  scientific  thought  the  very 
wish  that  it  be  sought.  Why  ?  Perhaps  because, 
lacking  the  straightforward  attractiveness  of  art,' 
religion  and  philosophy  would  have  found  less  clients 
had  they  written  upon  their  signboard :  "  This  is  the 
shop  for  soothing,  stimulating,  bracing,  useful  dreams 
and  mistakes ;  the  Great  Emporium  of  Vital  Lies." 


The  Surface  of  Things     155 


III 


The  Surface  op  Things  and  the  Depths  of  the  Ego 

"  Comparee  k  I'ignorance,  du  moins  a  I'ignorance 
consciente,  la  connaissance  est  sans  doute  ane  possession 
de  son  objet,"  writes  M.  Levy-Briihl.  "  Mais  compar6e 
k  la  participation  que  realise  la  mentalite  prelogique, 
cette  possession  n'est  jamais  qu'imparfaite,  insuffisante 
et  comme  exterieure.  Connaitre,  en  general,  c'est 
objectiver ;  objectiver,  c'est  projeter  hors  de  soi,  comme 
quelque  chose  d'etranger,  ce  qui  est  a  connaitre. 
Quelle  communion  intime  au  contraire,  les  representa- 
tions de  la  mentalite  prelogique  n'assurent-elles  pas 
entre  les  etres  qui  participent  les  uns  des  autres ! 
L'essence  de  la  participation  est  que  precisement  toute 
dualite  s'y  efface,  et  qu'en  depit  du  principe  de  la 
contradiction  le  sujet  est  k  la  fois  lui-meme  et  Tetre 
dont  il  participe.  .  .  L'effort  rationnel  pour  connaitre 
Dieu  semble  a  la  fois  unir  le  sujet  pensant  a  Dieu 
et  Ten  eloigner.  La  necessite  de  se  conformer  aux 
exigences  loigiques  s'oppose  aux  participations  entre 
I'homme  et  Dieu  qui  ne  sont  pas  representables  sans 
contradiction.  La  connaissance  se  reduit  ainsi  a  fortpeu 
de  chose.  Mais  quel  besoin  de  cette  connaissance  ration- 
nelle  a  le  fidele  qui  se  sent  uni  a  son  Dieu  ?  La  conscience 
qu'H  a  de  la  participation  de  son  etre  a  l'essence  divine 


. 


^56 


Vital  Lies 


ne  lui  procure-t-elle  pas  une  certitude  de  foi  au  prix  de 
laquelle  la  certitude  logique  sera  toujours  quelque  chose 
de  p^le,  de  froid,  de  presque  iudifferent  ?  Cette  ex- 
perience d'une  possession  intime  et  complete  de  Tobjet, 
possession  plus  profonde  que  toutes  celles  dont 
Tactivite  intellectuelle  pent  etre  I'origine,  fait  sans  doute 
le  ressort  des  doctrines  dites  anti-intellectualistes.  Ces 
doctrines  reparaissent  periodiquement  et  a  chaque  reap- 
parition  elles  retrouvent  faveur.  Car  elles  promettent 
ce  que  ni  la  science  positive  pure  ni  les  autres  doctrines 
philosophiques  ne  peuvent  se  flatter  d'atteindre  :  le 
contact  intime  et  immediat  avec  I'etre,  par  Tintuition, 
par  la  compen^tration,  par  la  conmiunion  reciproque 
du  sujet  et  de  I'objet,  par  la  plaine  participation,  en  un 
mot,  que  Plotin  a  decrite  sous  le  nom  d'extase.  Elles 
montrent  que  la  connaissance  soumise  aux  formes 
logiques  est  impuissante  k  surmonter  la  dualite,  qu'elle 
n'est  pas  une  possession  veritable,  qu'elle  demeure  k 
la  surface  ext^rieure  des  choses." 

Nothing  could  be  a  better  example  of  the  latter-day 
recrudescence  of  just  such  mystical  tendencies  than 
this  very  passage  from  a  thinker  who  has  done  so  much  to 
describe  (by  the  study  of  primitive  ideas)  and  define 
this,  which  he  calls  the  pre-hgical  or  mystical  stage  of 
thought,  the  stage  when  qualities  have  not  yet  been 
grouped  into  things,  and  feelings,  desires,  and  moods 
grouped  as  part  of  ourselves ;  when  emotions  and  not 


* 


The  Surface  of  Things     157 

observation  determine  the  coalescence  of  associations ; 
and  when  no  principle  of  contradiction  has  yet  cleared 
away  confusion  of  time  and  place  and  identity.  In 
this  passage  M.  Levy  Briihl,  whatever  his  ostensible 
philosophy,  is  implicitly  accepting  the  Bergsonian 
conception  of  an  obscure  knowledge,  when  he  says  that 
"  la  connaissance  soumise  aux  formes  logiques,  n'est 
pas  une  possession  veritable,  qu'elle  demeure  a  la  surface 
exterieurs  des  choses."  Let  us  think  over  those  two 
last  sentences,  let  us  try  and  run  to  ground  these  two 
meanings,  placed  in  opposition  to  one  another  :  "  real 
possession  "  and  "  surface  of  things."  And  let  us  begin 
by  the  second  of  these  rival  and,  it  would  seem,  in- 
compatible expressions.  What  is  the  surface  of  things  ? 
In  the  present  connection  it  means,  in  the  first  place, 
something  less  than  the  whole  of  things ;  it  means  two 
dimensions  instead  of  three ;  it  means  comparative 
poverty  of  our  knowledge.  But  it  means  something 
more  also,  and  this  is  made  obvious  by  the  recurrent 
word  "  penetration  " :  a  surface  is  that  which  checks  our 
progress,  it  is  that  into  which,  continuing  our  own  move- 
ment, we  cannot  penetrate.  There  is  therefore  in  this 
talk  of  the  surface  of  things  already  a  reference  to  con- 
ditions of  our  own  as  distinguished  from  conditions  and 
qualities  of  the  things  we  are  thus  said  to  know  only 
on  this  surface ;  and  this  reference  to  ourselves  it  is 
important  to  remember.  WeU  !  now  let  us  ask  our- 
selves in  what  sense  the  rational,  the  objective  know- 


158 


Vital  Lies 


ledge  of  things  can  be  justly  termed  superficial  ?    Not 
in  the  sense  of  its  lacking  a  dimension,  of  its  aUowing 
our  thoughts  to  move  only  up  and  down  while  refusing 
their  entrance  into  the  solid  mass  of  the  subject.    For 
rational,  objective  knowledge  means  on  the  contrary 
that  we  can  give  ourselves  a  representation  of  the 
various  qualities  of  things  and  their  relations  to  one 
another,  not  only  in  the  three  dimensions  of  space, 
but  in  the  more  numerous  dimensions  of  time  and  of 
every  other  reference  ;   objective  knowledge  means  that 
we  can  send  our  thoughts  from  any  of  a  hundred 
points   of   view,    through    the    known   universe   not 
only  as  across  a  map,  or  as  down  by  a  shaft  or 
diving-beU,  or  up  as  by  a  baUoon,  but  also  analyti- 
caUy    as    through    a    series    of    microscopes,    syn- 
theticaUy  as  through  telescopes  embracing  more  and 
more   of    the  [firmament.     Such   is   rational   know- 
ledge:  it   is   the    making   of  inteUectual   tracks  in 
every  direction  and  so  closely  interwoven  and  inter- 
meshed  as  to  leave  out  less  and  less  of  that  reality  which 
exists  as  simultaneity,  but  which  we  can  think  (as  we 
can  move  in  it  materiaUy)  only  in  a  mitigated  con- 
secutiveness.    Now  what  is  the  difference  between  this 
and  "  real  possession  "  of  things  ?    And  what  is  the 
element  the  latter  can  give,  and  whereof  the  intellectual 
dealing  with  things  is  thus  said  to  defraud  us.    We  shaU 
understand  if  we  pick  up  a  word,  which  I  asked  you  to 
earmark,  the  word  " pcwetra^ion."    Penetration/    But 


The  Surface  of  Things     159 

our  thoughts  have  penetrated  through  the  known 
universe,  and  are  constantly  penetrating  through  it, 
from  ever  new  points,  in  ever  new  directions  and 
dimensions,  until  the  whole  of  human  thought  nets 
things  round,  not  like  the  latitudes  and  longitudes  of  a 
globe,  but  in  every  mode  of  penetration.  Indeed,  such 
objective,  disinterested  "  grasping  "  of  wholes  is  the 
precise  reverse  of  the  one-sided  interest  with  which 
desire  and  practical  purpose  concentrate  upon  a  single 
quality  or  group  of  qualities  and  disregard  all  the 
other  "  sides "  and  "  ways "  which  happen  not  to 
be  in  immediate  relation  with  themselves.  What 
does  the  man  who  eats  a  fruit  know  of  its  chemistry 
and  botany  ?  What  even  the  man  who  grafts  the 
tree,  with  his  thoughts  bent  on  that  and  fruit 
production,  know  of  the  relation  with  one  another 
of  tree  and  fruit  and  soil,  and  air,  beyond  just 
what  his  "  interest "  requires.  What  does  the 
mother  know  of  the  life  of  the  embryo  save  that  its 
movements  fill  her  with  hope  and  rapture  and  awe  ? 
What  does  the  lover  know  of  the  beloved  except  the 
qualities  which  he  loves  and  the  fact  of  his  loving? 
And  what  does  the  religious  ecstatic  (since  we  are  back 
again  at  the  "  Varieties  of  Keligious  Experiences ") 
know  about  God  except  the  assurance  that  God  is 
present  and  near  and  is  all-sujficient  for  his  wishes. 
Nay,  the  religious  mystic  has,  at  all  times,  shown 
amazing    indifEerence    to    any   possible    aspects    of 


i6o 


Vital  Lies 


I 


I 


the    divinity  other  than   those    benignantlj   turned 
towards  himself : 

"  Confutatis  maledictis. 
Flammis  acribus  addictis, 
Vooa  me  cum  benedictis." 

And  when,   like  Dante's  Piccarda,    the    mystic   has 
been   safely  called  among  the  blessed,  he  or  she  is 
resigned   not   only   to   other   blessed    ones  living  in 
closer  neighbourhood   to    the    Centre    of  Love,  but 
resigned  apparently  to  the  eternal  horrors  of  heU  in 
the   world's    bowels   below.      "In  sua   voluntade   e 
nostra  pace  "  means  that  you  concern  yourself  with 
only  that  much  of  the  supreme  will  which  happens  to 
contribute  to  your  own  peace.    For  there  we  have  got 
to  the  point :   the  possession  which  rational  compre- 
hension does  not  give  is  the  possession  by  our  desires ;  and 
the  surface  which  we  seem  to  encounter,  is  resisting 
not  to  our  understanding,  but  to  our  emotions.    This 
rational   universe  can   be   penetrated  into  in  every 
direction,  but  on  one  condition,  that  we  shall  modestly 
seek  it  for  itself,  that  we  be  interested  in  it,  that  we 
leave  our  desires  and  passions  at  the  door.     That  door 
through  which  our  self-feeling  cannot  pass,  is  the  surface 
it  complains  of  and  off  which  it  feels  itself  repeUed. 
Beyond  that  boundary  lie  the  fields  of  knowledge, 
Ues  the  realm  of  being,  that  is  to  say,  of  that  which  is, 
as  distinguished  from  that  which  /  fed  and  /  want.' 
And  by  one  of  the  most  amazing  of  egoistic  delusions, 


The  Surface  of  Things    1 6 1 

the  mystical  thought  of  all  time  has  taken  that 
exclusion  for  an  inclusion,  it  has  called  its  passionate 
abysming  of  itself  in  itself  penetration  into  the  reality 
of  things;  it  has  mistaken  the  obscure  ebbings  and 
Sowings,  and  quiverings  and  shrinkings  of  its  inner,  per- 
haps its  bodily,  microcosm,  for  a  profounder  experience 
of  the  Universe  ;  and,  like  the  eastern  ecsfcasy-monger, 
it  has  taken  its  own  fixedly  contemplated  navel,  that 
memento  of  mere  vegetative  life,  for  the  hub  of  all 
existence. 

And  this  penetration  into  itself,  this  submerging  in  its 
own  imiermost  processes,  is  what  a  certain  philosophy 
is  ofiering  us  once  more  as  the  truer  possession  of 
reality  ! 

It  is  more  satisfactory.  Such  is  the  latter-day 
commendation  of  this  profound,  intimate  penetration 
beyond  the  surface  of  things,  that  surface  which  is  their 
boundary,  and  as  much  their  nature  as  our  nature  is 
also  our  boundary.  It  is  not  merely  satisfactory  to  be 
concerned  with  ourselves  and  our  modes  of  being, 
and  to  insist  upon  them,  it  is  also  necessary  and 
legitimate.  But  on  one  condition :  we  must  re- 
cognize that  it  is  ourselves  we  are  dealing  with. 
liCt  us  say  :  "  I  wish,"  "  I  want,"  "  I  love,"  "  I 
make,"  but  not  it  is. 

And  here,  perhaps,  comes  in  the  great  hidden  educator 
and  moraliser,  Art.  Art,  through  the  infinite  genera- 
tions,  has  taught  us  to  give  to  ourselves  the  emotional 


l62 


Vital  Lies 


satisfactions  which  reality  refuses,  to  carve  the  idol  and 
build  the  temple  instead  of  thinking  that  we  have  seen 
the  divinity  ;  in  more  modem  days,  to  build  up  sounds 
into  the  expression  of  those  modes  of  feeling  which  we 
cannot  obtain  strong  and  pure  enough  in  our  own  lives  ; 
and,  by  the  poet's,  by  the  writer's  craft  to  allow  each 
individual  to  gather  his  associations  into  groups 
dominated  consciously  by  the  heart's  desire.  I  have 
called  Art  a  great  educator  and  moraliser ;  for,  among 
other  important  functions.  Art  has  taught  us  to  deal 
fully  aware  with  a  world  yonside  of  truth  and  error  ;  in 
so  far,  to  distinguish  between  what  we  want  and  what 
is,  and,  even  if  only  in  such  matters  as  these,  to  be 
lucid  and  honest. 


IV 


Contact  and  Sight,  Instinct  and  Knowledge 

Modem  obscurantism  is  always  suggesting,  and 
occasionally  proclaiming,  that  there  is  truth  in  ideas 
which  minister  directly  to  our  feelings,  as  distinguished 
from  the  tmth  of  ideas  answering  not  to  such  emo- 
tional needs,  but  to  the  alluvium  of  objective  impres- 
sions which  we  call  experience.  Subjective  phenomena, 
these  philosophers  tell  us,  are  also  and  equally  part  of 
our  experience.  Of  course  ;  but  only  when  considered 
objectively.    And  it  is  only  thus  objectively  regarded 


1 


Contact  and  Sight       163 

that  subjective  phenomena  become  legitimate  parts  of 
ideas  and  amenable  to  the  distinction  of  being  tme  or 
false.  My  weariness,  my  dislike  or  my  longing  become 
assets  to  knowledge  only  inasmuch  as  I  think  of  them 
as  experienced.  But  however  much  they  may  influence 
my  ideas,  they  cannot  form  part  of  my  ideas  so 
long  as  experienced.  And  however  much  they  may 
influence  my  ideas,  they  cannot  form  part  of  my 
ideas  so  long  as  they  are  only  felt,  and  are  not  yet 
thought  of. 

The  lack  of  this  little  distinction,  simple  and  yet 
elusive,  is  responsible  for  a  great  part  of  all  unll-to- 
believe  Pragmatism,  and  is  what  vitiates  (so  far  as 
I  can  grasp  it)  the  systematic  portion  of  Bergson. 
The  philosophers  of  the  Past,  little  concerned  with 
psychology,  did  not  bring  subjective  phenomena  into 
count  as  part  of  the  really  existing ;  they  treated  a 
delusion  as  non-existent,  because  the  delusion  was 
"  empty."  Modem  philosophers  of  the  psychological 
school  (and  remark  that  Bergson,  like  James,  is 
eminently  a  psychologist,  recognising  that  delusions 
exist,  and  are  potent)  are  tempted  to  regard  the  some- 
thing about  which  people  are  deluded  as  being  tme 
because  those  people  are  truly  deluded  ;  although  one 
might  answer,  in  an  Irish  manner,  that  a  true  delusion 
cannot  truly  exist. 

There  seems  to  be  a  relation,  a  relation  which  is 
perhaps  in  reality  an  attitude,  between  our  hold  on 


164 


Vital  Lies 


reality  and  our  possibility  of  getting  outside  ourselves, 
one  might  almost  say  our  altruism.  We  hmyw  in  pro- 
portion as  we  transcend  our  own  needs  and  desires, 
since  these  are  directed  to  only  one  or  two  qualities 
of  things,  while  our  thought  unites  many  qualities  and 
possibilities,  making  things  cubic,  placing  them  in  a 
third  dimension  and  in  complex  relation,  not  to  our- 
selves only,  but  to  one  another.  An  existence  is  essen- 
tially a  more  or  less  thought-out  group  of  actual  and 
potential  qualities,  a  combination  of  past,  present  and 
future  experiences,  and  not  the  experiences  which  we 
think  of  as  ours,  but  the  experiences  also  of  minds  which 
we  think  of  as  like  our  own.  There  goes  a  certain 
altruism,  as  I  said,  and  a  certain  unselfish  imagination, 
to  the  conception  of  realities,  for  that  conception,  that 
dUefr,  is  gained  on  the  margin  left  by  the  consciousness 
of  our  own  present  states,  hence  it  seems  to  me  (and  in 
direct  opposition  to  Bergsonian  enshrining  of  intuiton) 
that  our  least  imperfect  and  incomplete  knowledge 
is  precisely  the  knowledge  least  directly  connected  with 
practice  and  least  steeped  in  self-regarding  emotion. 
Practice  takes  into  account  a  minimum  of  relations 
between  objective  qualities,  and  feeling  takes  those  few 
objective  qualities  that  concern  itself  ;  but  this  narrow 
experience  has  the  warmth  and  vividness  of  our  ego 
and  its  activities ;  the  warmth  of  our  circulation  and 
the  vividness  of  our  movements.  And  this  warmth  and 
vividness,  which  is  of  ourselves,  has  led  certain  thinkers 


1 


i 


Contact  and  Sight       165 


(as  it  had  led  poets  long  ago  and  mystics)  to  the  notion 
that  need  and  practice,  desire  and  satisfaction,  are  the 
very  perfection  of  knowing.  Latter-day  philosophy 
tends  to  identify  knowledge  with  intuition,  and  even 
with  the  instinct  which  pushes  an  animal  to  adapt  its 
proceedings  it  knows  not  to  what  or  wherefore  ;  such 
philosophy  tends  to  measure  knowledge  by  its  obscurity 
and  even  its  unconsciousness.  And  such  philosophy 
seems  made  on  purpose  for  those  people  who,  ever  since 
always,  have  spoken  of  knomng  God  as  equivalent  to 
loving  or  wanting  God,  and  to  whom  truth  is  not  fulfilled 
anticipation,  but  satisfied  desire. 

Would  it  not  be  correct,  on  the  contrary,  to  compare 
the  difference  between  knowledge  and  instinct  with 
the  difEerence  between  sight  and  bodily  contact  ?  Like 
seeing,  knowledge  is  reconstruction;  it  implies  not 
merely  memory,  but  expectation  ;  like  bodily  contact, 
instinct  sets  the  reflexes  at  work,  and  the  whole 
creature  quivering  with  its  own  warmth  or  cold.  All 
individual  life  begins  with  contact  and  instinct,  and  all 
life  abuts  there,  but  seeing  and  knowing  are  those 
links  of  the  perpetually  necessary  human  rhythm  by 
which  alone  it  enlarges  and  tends  to  become  com- 
mensurate with  the  rhythm  of  the  universe. 


; 


i66 


Vital  Lies 


Beroson's  Direct  Data 

There  seems  to  be,  as  Bergson  is  always  teaching  (but 
with  another  corollary  !),  an  inevitable  obscurity  about 
what  this  psychologist  in  philosopher's  garb  has  called 
the  direct  data  (donn^  immMiales)  of  our  consciousness, 
an  obscurity  which  I  explain  psychologically  by  our 
ccenesihesia  being,  in  the  normal  state,  remarkably 
deficient  in  such  marks  as  help  us  to  localize  sensations. 
Indeed,  these  direct  data,  this  knowledge  from  within,  this 
knowledge  from  what  Professor  James  alludes  to  as 
"  subconscious  regions,"  consists  mainly  in  modes  of 
our  activity ;  these  inner  data  are  hows  rather  than 
whats,  they  are  facts  of  succession,  co-existence,  re- 
petition, tension,  slackness,  effort,  relief,  direction ; 
above  all,  facts  of  grasping  forwards,  shrinking  back- 
wards, seeking,  avoiding — in  short,  of  preference  and 
repulsion.  This  is  what  I  would  call,  rather  than  the 
subamscious,  the  purely  subjective,  the  absolutely  inner 
self ;  it  constitutes,  I  think,  the  very  essence  of  the 
chaotic  dark  consciousness  of  our  life. 

Now  there  would  seem  to  be  (and  it  is  easy  to  guess 
why)  a  constant  tendency  to  connect  these  fragmentary 
and  chaotic  items  of  inner  consciousness  with  the  data 
of  our  outward-dealing  senses,  and,  while  shaping  our 


Bergson's  Direct  Data    167 


outer  sensations  into  our  inner  modes,  also  to  give  these 
inner  modes  a  contents,  a  "  meaning  "  consonant  with 
our  outer  sensations.    For  our  inner  data  are  few  and 
obscure,  because  they  are  the  facts  of  vital  processes 
constantly  repeated,  largely  therefore  automatic  and 
entirely  intimate  and  indispensable.     Our  outer  data 
are  endlessly  various  because  they  depend  on  endlessly 
changing    outer    circumstances,    and    also    extremely 
distinct   because   they   are   classified  by  the   highly 
specialized  outer  sense-organs ;   the  data  of  sight  and 
hearing,  for  instance,  thoroughly  separate  from  one 
another,  those  of  taste  and  smell  already  less  so,  and 
nearer  to  the  inner  sensitiveness ;  touch,  temperature, 
and  the  muscular  sense  still  closer  to  the  coenesthesia. 

The  safety  of  our  existence  depends  upon  the  peri- 
pheric consciousness  being  brought  into  relation  with 
our  inner  activities,  and  our  inner  adjustments  being 
regulated  by  our  outer  sensations ;  hence  a  perpetual 
inter-play  between  the  outer  and  the  inner  data,  the 
facts  of  the  peripheral  senses  being  assimilated  to  the 
inner  experience. 

There  is,  I  imagine,  a  necessary  outward  tendency  of 
our  activities,  our  peripheral  functions,  stoking,  so  to 
speak,  for  our  inner  ones,  as  the  primitive  sea  creatures 
draw  into  themselves  the  water  wherein  they  float,  as 
we  ourselves  imbibe  air,  and  as  our  constituent  cells 
imbibe  the  liquids  in  which  they  steep.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  are  perpetually  throwing  off  not  oxdj  our 


I 


1 68 


Vital  Lies 


waste  but  our  surplusage  :  generation  and  all  making 
and  fashioning  are  of  this  order.    Hence  there  is  every 
reason  why  there  should  be  a  permanent  exchange  or 
change  of  place  between  our  inner  and  our  outer  data, 
why  the  modes  of  the  inner  life  (modes  of  motion,  energy' 
sequence,  volition,  connection,  etc.),  should  be  attri-' 
buted  by  what  the  Germans  calls  EinfUhlung  to  the 
data  of  the  senses,  why  all  inner  data  which  are  not 
needed  to  regulate  our  adjustments  (pleasure-pain  data 
particularly)  should  be  projected  onto  the  periphery. 
But  from  this  give-and-take  there  arises  also  that  our 
inner   states,  and  in  proportion  as  they  are  difficult  to 
localize,  tend  to  explain  themselves  by  such  reference 
to  the  outside,  to  the  non-ego  ;  in  other  words,  we  get 
the  habit  of  giving  our  inner  states  the  support,  the' 
explanation,  of  outer  facts,  of  finding  objective  reasons 
for  our  own  elations  and  depressions,  our  inner  crav- 
ings and  shrinkings.     This  tendency  to  seek  external 
reasons,  motives,  sometimes  excuses,  for  our  own  inner 
conditions,  has  doubtless  been  increased  by  the  fact  that 
outer  impressions,  being  not  only  very  various  but 
independent  of  us  in  their  variation,  would  harass  and 
interrupt  our  inner  consciousness  if  it  did  not,  so  to 
speak,  use  them  up  for  its  own  purposes,  and  as  a 
framework,  often  an  incorrectly  connected  framework, 
for  itself. 

Thus  it  happens  that  whenever  we  want  certain  inner 
states  to  continue  and    intensify,  instead   of   being 


Bergson's  Direct  Data    169 


interrupted  and  confused,  we  attach  them,  by  automatic 
habit,  to  an  outer  cause.    We  beat  back  the  inroads  of 
the  outer  world  by  establishing  the  headquarters  of  our 
own  inner  conditions  in  it  or  in  what  seems  to  be  it ; 
we  are    not   able  to  keep  up  any  synthesis  of  inner 
consciousness  without  thus  allying  it  to  the  thought, 
if  not  the  reality,  of  something  outside  us  ;  our  inner 
life  is  like  that  most  perfect  egoist,  Meredith's  Sir 
Willoughby,  requiring  to  bolster  up  his  ego  on  the  per- 
sonality of  tyrannized-over  or  admiring  fellow-beings. 
For  the  human  soul,  by  the  necessities  of  human  life,  is 
directed  outwards,  and  our  whole  existence  an  inner- 
outer  rhythm.     In  this  lies  the  explanation  of  Art. 
Certain  desirable  inner  congruities  of  function  require 
the  prop,  the  framework  of  outer  circumstances  ;  and  it 
is  given  us  by  Art.   The  work  of  Art  is  what  enables  us  to 
obtain  an  uninterrupted,  intensified  (maximum  and  con- 
tinuum) synthesis  of  our  own  most  beneficial  modalities 
of  being ;  it  makes  us  live  intensely  and  harmoniously. 
The  study  of  ^Esthetics  sheds  considerable  light  upon 
all  this  side  of  Religion.    The  God,  like  the  work  of  Art, 
like  the  lover's  or  idolater's  Fetish,  is  (among  other 
things)  a  device  for  reviving   or  producing  certain 
syntheses  of  feeling  in  ourselves,  syntheses  which  may 
last  a  second,  or,  through  constant  repetition,  be  spread 
almost  uninterruptedly  over  a  lifetime.    The  difference 
is  that  in  the  case  of  Art  we  do  not  attribute  independent 
objective  existence  to  our  own  states ;  we  know  that  we, 


I70 


Vital  Lies 


or  others  like  ua,  have  arranged  the  thing  ;   we  know 
that  we  are  contemplating  to  please  ourselvea,  and  that 
the  contemplated  object  has  been  made  for  such  con- 
templation.   In  the  case  of  Religion  we  muddle  this 
fact  up  with  the  quite  different  fact  of  the  existence  of 
an  independent  Universe,  the  Universe  which  sensations 
testify  to,  and  we  persuade  ourselves  that  we  are  serv- 
ing someone  else  when  we  are  only  serving  ourselves. 
Hence  the  greater  sincerity  of  Art.    Hence  also  Art's 
far  lesser  efficacy.    For  Art  requires  an  Artist ;  we  are 
not  able,  most  of  us,  to  make  beautiful  scaffoldings  for 
our  feelings ;  we  have  to  accept  them  from  the  imperious 
natures  of  greater  men,  who  leave  us  only  a  small  amount 
of  freedom  (irrelevance,  misinterpretation)  and  bid  us 
feel  as  they  choose  rather  than  as  we  do.    Now  in  the  case 
of  Religion  the  individual  believer  can  tinker  at  his 
divinity ;   his  God  is  hidden  in  his  own  mind,  and  he 
improves  or  defaces  the  Idol  far  more  freely  than  he 
could  venture  to  do  the  work  of  Art. 


u 


VI 

PippA  Passes  " 


By  the  delusory  transfer  of  the  various  states  of  the 
soul  or  its  various  activities,  we  are  for  ever  mistaking 
our  attitudes  for  ideas.  When  Pippa  and  Browning 
says,  "  God's  in  His  heaven,  all's  right  with  the  worid," 


''Pluralistic  Universes''    171 

this  is  the  expression,  not  of  the  idea  which  it  literally 
signifies,  but  of  an  attitude  in  which  Pippa  and 
Browning  are  readier  to  accept  the  argument  for  Gx)d 
being  in  His  Heaven  than  the  contrary  one,  and  readier 
to  see  what  is  right  in  the  world  than  what  is  wrong. 
And  an  attitude  is,  at  bottom,  an  emotional  condition. 
Pippa's  emotion  is  optimistic,  and  hence  Pippa  looks 
rather  at  optimistic  explanations  of  the  universe  than  at 
pessimistic  ones.  We  cannot  Think  an  emotion,  still 
less  put  it  into  the  logical  form  in  which  we  most  often 
transfer  the  contents  of  our  consciousness  to  others,  or 
register  it  for  ourselves ;  so  we  lay  about  us  for  some 
idea,  or  rather  most  often  some  ready-made  set  of  words, 
suitable  to  the  emotion,  whatever  it  is,  and  we  register 
or  communicate  that.  What  is  at  the  bottom  of 
Pippa's  mind,  the  fact  her  remark  really  answers  to, 
is,  "  I  am  well  and  pleased,  the  Sun  is  bright,"  or 
perhaps  a  certain  musical  theme,  say,  of  Mozart. 


{( 


VII 

Pluralistic  Universes  " 


Reading  W.  James's  Pluralistic  Universe  and  re- 
reading Bergson's  three  great  books. 

That  logic  should  be  false  to  Reality :  surely  not. 
Our  religion,  our  art  may  indeed  be  fabricated  by  our- 
selves to  render  our  life  more  endurable ;  delusions, 


172 


Vital  Lies 


things  made  to  suit  us  and  by  us.    But  in  order  to 
fabricate  these  delusions,  or  any  other  kind  of  Vital  Lie, 
we  are    obliged   to  postulate  something  outside  and 
independent   of  them,  namely,  reality.     Analogy  is 
experience  ;   a  delusion  is  a  false  analogy.    If  our  judg- 
ments were  acts  of  free  choice,  instead  of  being  impera- 
tives constraining  us,  the  scene-painter  could  not  delude 
us  into  accepting  his  arrangement  of  verticals  on  the 
flat  for  horizontals  in  cubic  space.    Similarly,  in  order 
to  please  ourselves  with  "  God's  in  His  heaven,  all's 
right  with  the  world,"  we  have  to  coerce  ourselves  by 
certain   analogies.     If   I   happen   to   be   happy   this 
morning,   happiness  exists,   and  if  happiness  exists, 
other  people  may  also  be  happy,  etc.,  etc.    All  em- 
ployment of  human  thought  for  human  satisfaction 
depends  upon  the  existence  of  thought  unconditioned 
by  human  satisfaction,  thought  which  before  becoming 
our  servant  must  be  recognized,  like  the  statesman 
or  general,  or  even  policeman,  as  our  master.    And  all 
arrangement  of  things  or  notions  to  suit  human  needs 
—needs    physiological,   aesthetic,   moral,    or    "tran- 
scendental "—presupposes  that  man  exists  in  a  milim 
independent  of  his  thoughts  and  volitions,  and  which 
can  therefore  react  upon  these  thoughts  and  volitions 
in  the  way  desired. 

As  regards  Pragmatism,  it  does  not  furnish  us  with  a 
Pluralistic  Universe,  but  with  a  thinker  who  interrupts 
his  thinking,  an  experimenter  who  breaks  off  his  ex- 


That  Poor  Drudge,  Reason    173 

periment,  whenever  it  suits  his  feelings.  Pragmatistic 
thought  resembles  the  artist's  thought,  in  so  far  as  both 
not  only  build  for  the  Heart's  Desire,  but  also  (as  Omar 
Khayyam  forgot  to  mention),  break  ofE  and  sweep 
away  its  own  construction  whenever  the  logical 
necessities,  i.e.  the  peculinrities  itidependent  of  his 
wishes,  begin  to  bore  or  to  annoy  it.  The  Pluralistic 
Pragmatist  takes  advantage  of  the  fact  (for  even  he 
must  build  with  facts!)  that  we  need  not  always 
think  on  and  on,  that  there  are  other  subjects  and 
other  points  of  view;  in  short,  that  although  the 
independent  universe  rolls  on  in  its  established  maimer, 
with  or  without  the  music  of  the  spheres  and  the  hymn 
of  Goethe's  archangels,  human  attention  can  turn 
upon  its  ear  and,  for  a  while,  dream  of  its  own  juicy 
cabbages  or  intoxicating,  efEulgent  roses. 


VIII 

That  Poor  Drudge,  Reason 

That  intellectualism,  as  its  disparagers  call  it,  has  been 
fostered  by  human  practicality,  I  think  no  one  could 
deny,  because  it  seems  likely  that,  seeing  man's  far  from 
excessive  energies,  only  such  activities  would  have 
developed  as  were  practically  valuable.  But  that 
"  intellectualism  "  should  be  due  to  the  manufacturing 


it 


174 


Vital  Lies 


In 


practicality  in  especial,  to  man's  intending  and  willing 
and  making,  or  rather  that  the  limitations  of  human 
intellect  should  be  thus  explained,  is  a  totally  different 
assumption.    Those  who  make  this  assumption  (the 
Bergsonians,  for  instance)  forget  that  the  limitations  of 
the  human  intellect  are  largely  explicable  by  its  acting 
with  far  more  consecutiveness  than  simultaneity ;    a 
fact  in  its  turn  explicable  by  the  things  which  concern 
us  not  concerning  us  all  at  the  same  moment,  existing 
in  various  points  of  space  because  they  are  many, 
whereas  each  of  us  being  only  one,  exists  at  one  point  at 
a  time  ;  we  are  obliged  to  shift  our  point  of  view  and 
alter  our  focus,  and  hence  all  "  intellectual  knowledge  " 
tends  to  analysis.     Thus  the  very  sense  of  a  whole  seems 
to  exclude  an  adequate  appreciation  of  separate  parts. 
We  have  to  think  the  microscopic  aspect  at  a  different 
moment,  in  a  different  manner,  from  the  macroscopic ; 
the  mountain  range  as  a  separate  act  from  the  moun- 
tain's component  earths  and  ores  ;  and  when  we  think 
both  together  we   think  vaguely  and  rather  emptily 
and  verbally,  or  else  in  a  rapid  oscillation  between  the 
two.     But  that  this  defect— if  it  is  a  defect  and  not 
a  richness— should  be  due  to  practicality  I  fail  to  see, 
except  in  so  far  as  practicality  is  identified  with  life 
itself.    Rather  it  is  explained  by  our  double  peculiarity 
of  possessing  locomotion,  hence  successive  experience, 
and  specialized  analytic  senses  (sight,  taste,  smell,  hear- 
ing, and  touch),  which  not  only  afford  a  multitude  of 


That  Poor  Drudge,  Reason    175 

different  impressions,  but  capture  into  their  laboratory 
different  natural  phenomena.  To  say  that  practicality 
has  made  intellect  analytical  is  merely  saying  that 
practicality  had  to  conform  to  the  fact  of  such  con- 
secutiveness and  analysis.  But  practicality  tends,  on 
the  contrary,  to  synthetic  perception,  to  the  pre- 
dominance of  a  need,  of  an  intended  action  fastening 
on  to  a  single  quality  or  group  of  qualities,  and  englob- 
ing  them  and  itself  in  a  narrowed  down  vision  ;  for  what 
can  be  narrower,  more  fragmentary  than  the  instinctive 
reaction,  upon  the  single  datum  of  a  single  sense,  as  in  the 
instinct  of  lower  animals  and  of  our  own  least  conscious 
selves,  which  Bergsonism  treats  as  a  most  complete 
knowledge  ?  I  sometimes  wonder  whether  there  is  not  a 
confusion  in  Bergsonians  (William  James,  for  instance), 
and  even  in  Bergson  himself :  a  false  analogy  snatched  by 
their  crepuscular  thought,  between  practical  manufacture 
and  intellectual  construction  and  whether  this  may  not 
be  the  explanation  of  their  notion  of  "  practicality  " 
having  "  disintegrated  "  reality  into  intellectual  con- 
cepts ?  For  if  practicality,  or  practicality's  forced 
recognition  of  existing  constitutions,  has  analyzed  and 
separated  and  classified  our  perceptions,  it  has  also 
reconstructed  them  into  the  concentric  and  super- 
posed synthesis  wherewith  we  attempt  to  compass 
Reality.  Thus  our  locomotion,  our  consecutiveness, 
make  us  measure  and  compare ;  the  analytic  habit  of 
our  specialized  senses  enables  us  to  form  scales  of 


M 


176 


Vital  Lies 


quaUties,  and  these  we  are  able  to  break  up  and  re- 
build  in  various  fashions. 

FinaUy,  I  would  deny  that  there  is  any  inferiority 
in  the  intellectual  necessity  of  analysis.     To  a  creature 
who  is  but  a  small  fragment  of  Reality,  the  whole  of 
Reality  cannot  surely  be  a  continuum ;   the  more  of 
Reality  such  a  creature  can  apprehend  the  more  that 
must  be  discontinuous,  discrete,  because  attention  is 
intermittent,  and  positions,  points  of  view  are  various, 
and  because  specialized  sense  is  specialized.    We  do 
not  swim  in  a  vague  over-alUish  experience  penetrating 
into  us  with  equal  force  and  provoking  everywhere  the 
same  reactions,  we  move  among  alternating  experiences, 
exposmg  partial  surfaces  thereto,  and  aU  our  consciou^ 
life  IS  the  registration  of  their  variety  and  alternation ; 
indeed,  but  for  alternation  and  variety,  there  could  be 
no  consciousness  at  aU.     And  it  is  this  alternating, 
vanous,  discontinuous  nature  of  our  experience  which 
gives  to  this  experience  its  comparative  universality ; 
universality  compared  to  what  it  would  be  if  it  were 
not  thus  alternate,  various,  and  discontinuous.    For  if 
human   experience    were  a  continuum  (as  what  lies 
beyond  and  beneath  experience  probably  is)  it  would 
indeed  not  corUain  any  limits,  but  it  would  be  limited 
Itself ;  we  should  not  move  within  experience  with  that 
power  of  measurement  and  comparison,  with  that  seuse 
of  similarity  and  difference  which  give  command  over 
the  future  as  well  as  the  present  by  organizing  expecta- 


' 


Thought  as   Movement    177 

tion  and  registering  disappointment.  In  other  words, 
"  non-intellectualized  "  experience  would  also  be  far 
more  partial,  it  would  be  as  the  experience  of  skin  and 
viscera  compared  with  the  experience  of  sight  and  loco- 
motion. It  would,  it  seems  to  me,  be  purely  sub- 
jective ;  experience  of  variations  in  our  states,  not  that 
experience  of  a  non-ego  which  implies  the  projection  of 
some  of  our  sensations  into  a  not-ourselves,  into  a  space 
constructed  by  our  locomotion^  out  of  our  specialized 
senses,  our  separate  and  intermittent  data ;  such  ex- 
perience would  be  all  "  I  am  "  and  no  "It  is."  Now 
"  It  is  "  happens  to  be  the  name  we  give  in  life  to  what 
is  called  philosophically  "  Reality." 


IX 


Thought  as  Movement 

All  our  thinking  is  done  in  terms  of  movement,  and 
all  our  thinking  is  consecutive.  We  can  pursue  only  one 
line  of  thought,  make  one  series  of  connections,  at  the 
same  fraction  of  time.  But  we  know  that  besides  the 
line  we  have  just  been  pursuing,  besides  the  points  we 
have  just  been  connecting,  we  have  pursued  other  lines 
and  connected  other  points  ;  and  we  know  that  we  can 

*  Cf.  M.  Ribot,  "  Le  R61e  latent  des  Images  Motrices,"  in  Revite 
PhUosophique,  March  1912. 


If 


! 


'•  |i 


11 


178 


Vital  Lies 


do  80  again.  Moreover,  we  know  that  we  have  aUemately 
pursued  the  same  and  other  lines,  connected  the  same 
and  different  points,  and  that  our  expectation,  based 
upon  similar  experience,  of  returning  to  lines  previously 
pursued,  to  points  previously  connected,  has  been  in 
many  cases  justified,  we  can  return  on  to  the  road  to 
the  North  which  we  left  to  pursue  the  road  to  the  South, 
and  the  roads  East  and  West  which  we  pursued  before 
that.  We  are  able  to  alternate  the  pursuits  of  these 
different  directions,  and  we  consequently  infer  that 
these  roads  co-exist  in  the  intervals  of  our  pursuing  them  ; 
that  these  directions  could  be  pursued  at  the  moment 
that  we  do  not  pursue  them.  All  this  constitutes  a 
sense  of  the  possibility  of  simultaneous  activity  if  we 
could  give  it,  in  other  words,  a  sense  of  the  co-existence 
of  possibilities  of  sensation  and  action  if  we  could  feel 
or  do  in  sufficient  simultaneity.  Such  possibility  of 
co-existence  means  the  construction  of  a  space,  a  some- 
where in  which  we  could  move  alternately  in  various 
directions  ;  and  in  which  things  (or  if  you  prefer  mere 
ideal  lines  of  direction)  are  waiting,  so  to  speak,  for  us 
to  turn  to  them  in  our  alternating  movement.  Mean- 
while, the  knowledge  that  we  have  had  various 
grouped  sensations  at  various  moments,  and  that 
these  grouped  sensations  have  reappeared  when  we 
followed  along  other  groups  of  sensations,  similarly 
binds  up  our  various  and  separate  sense-impressions 
into  that  belief  in  their  potential  existence  which  is 


Thought  as  Movement    179 

what  we  mean  when  we  believe  in  the  existence  of 
things. 

When  we  say  "  while  so  and  so  was  going  on,  such 
another  was  going  on  elsewhere,"  we  mean  that  if  at 
a  given  moment,  we  had  removed  our  attention,  let  ua 
say,  from  the  Paris  rabble  marching  to  Versailles  in 
1790,  we  might  have  witnessed  Mozart  directing  an 
opera  at  Vienna.  We  mean  that  the  two  events  were 
contemporaneous  although  we  can  only  think  them 
consecutively,  and  that  there  must  have  been  different 
portions  of  space  for  them  to  go  on.  Moreover,  we  mean 
that  if  we  could  have  received  two  different  and  exclud- 
ing groups  of  impressions,  those  of  the  marching 
crowd  on  a  road  and  of  Mozart  at  his  pianoforte  in 
a  theatre,  there  would  have  been  wherewithal  to 
furnish  us  with  those  groups  of  impressions;  and 
this  again  is  that  grouping  together  of  potential, 
though  not  actual,  impressions  which  we  call  the  real 
existence  of  things. 

Now  one  of  our  greatest  intellectual  difficulties, 
perhaps  the  one  which  has  cast  most  slur  on  the 
intellect's  powers,  is  just  this  necessity  of  taking  up  the 
threads  we  have  let  go,  the  lines  we  are  no  longer 
moving  along ;  in  fact,  the  necessity  of  our  thought 
being,  like  our  words,  discontinuous,  discursive  in 
many  dimensions  and  directions  of  time  and  space ; 
subject  to  the  ands  and  huts  of  our  var3dng  movements. 


%i4 


I     80 


Vital  Lies 


Limitations  of  Thought     181 


H 


!t 


' 


Reason  as  Revelation 

Might  one  not  say,  reversing  Bergson's  notion,  that 
reasoned  knowledge  is  that  message  from  outer  Reality, 
which  has  been  able  to  penetrate  through  our  obscure 
preferences  and  habits  ;  nay,  that  logic  is  that  minimum 
of  sense  of  the  ways  of  Reality  required  for  even  our 
hide-bound  existence  ;  the  evidence  of  what  we  do  rwt 
expect  or  vnsh  registered  in  those  very  habits  which 
represent  our  safety  %    And,  so  far  from  thought,  as 
Bergson  has  it,  defacing  the  non-ego,  is  it  not  rather 
thought  which  brings  to  the  ego,  to  the  creature  sewn 
up  in  its  skin,  soaked  in  its  liquids  and  imperfectly 
windowed  by  its  senses,  the  requisite,  the  modicum  of 
knowledge  of  what  exists  beyond  it  ?     For,  after  all, 
ib  is  thought,  it  is  logic,  which  has  suggested  the  inference 
that  reality  transcends  our  experience,  that  reality 
cannot  be  coped  with,  perhaps,  by  our  logic.    It  is 
thought   which,    revealing  all  we    know  of  Reality, 
assures  us   at  the  same  time  that  Reality  exceeds, 
because  it  contains,  this  revelation. 


XI 


Limitations  of  Thought  and  Limitations  op 

Thinkers 

Much  thought  (the  fact  keeps  striking  me  afresh) 
is  but  the  reinstatement  of  fragments  of  truth  elimin- 
ated in  a  previous  summing  up,  in  the  synthesis  (usually 
by  some  one  else)  of  a  few  other  fragments  of  truth. 
This  lamentable  besetting  sin  of  all  statement — or 
perhaps  I  should  have  said  incurable  laziness  and 
cocksureness  of  all  who  state — ^has  something  to  do, 
I  think,  with  our  latter-day  depreciation  of  thinking  as 
such,  with  its  addition  that  thought  is  not  commen- 
surate with  fact,  and  its  innuendo  that  all  we  call 
truths  are  partial  falsehoods.  But  suppose  Thought 
applied  not  primarily  to  stating,  persuading,  and 
dissuading,  but,  once  in  a  way,  to  plain  understanding 
of  things,  should  we  not,  in  that  case,  get  something 
fairly  commensurate  with  the  experience  which  it 
embodied  and  connected  ?  And  if  we  considered  no 
longer  the  Thought  detached  by  the  statement,  the 
enunciation  of  individuals  and  schools  at  given  moments, 
but  the  body  of  thought  of  all  men  at  all  times,  we  might 
surely  recognize  in  it  something  as  vast  and  various  as 
experience,  and  able  to  deal  efficiently  with  it.  But 
individual   Thought   (mcluding   that   of  schools  and 


/ 


ti».m-_   .aiAiJ'" 


l82 


Vital  Lies 


trades)  has  not  merely  organized  itself  for  fragmentary 
purposes  of  practice,  but  it  has  learned  many  of  its 
proceedings  in  the  course  of  acting  upon  other  minds, 
curtailing  itself  for  easy  communication,  foreshortening 
itself  for  points  of  view,  let  alone  that  it  has  contracted 
all  the  vicious  habits  of  personal  advocacy  and  personal 
domination. 


XII 


Farewell  to  Vital  Lies 

Whenever  the  time  have  come  that  we  who  teach 
others  (perhaps  because  we  cease  to  do  so)  shall  have 
recognized  the  mischief  of  thus  hoodwinking  the  good 
faith  of  those  whom  we  teach,  and  thereby  lowering  the 
standard  of  intellectual  honesty  and  destroying  the  credit 
of  all  teaching ;  whenever  that  distant  time  have  arrived, 
it  is  quite  possible  that  the  word  lie  will  be  dropped 
out  of  similar  discussions,  or  rather  the  words  correct 
or  incorrect  be  substituted,  in  matters  of  opinion,  for 
the  words  true  and  false.  It  may  be  not  only  a  proof  of 
obscurantistic  habits,  but  a  mark  of  imperfect  under- 
standing and  of  the  habit  of  small  personal  considera- 
tions, to  connect  what  we  think  about  Nature  and  Man 
with  such  notions  as  that  of  honesty  on  one  hand  or 
fraud  on  the  other.  To  do  so  shows  that  low  as 
may  be  commercial  integrity,  intellectual  honesty  is 


Farewell  to  Vital  Lies     183 

lower  still,  since  it  has  not  yet  established  a  system 
of  credit. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  we  can  still  watch  our  educated 
selves  and  neighbours  failing  to  discriminate,  e.g.  in 
the  sort  of  Researches  called  psychical  or  spiritualistic 
becaiL3e  they  deal  with  the  h)rpothetical  souls  or  spirits 
of  the  dead,  instead  of  the  obvious  souls  of  the  living — 
we  can  watch  ourselves  failing  utterly  to  discriminate 
between  testimony  and  proof ;  indeed,  in  more  practical 
questions  even,  it  is  still  largely  the  character  of  the 
witness  which  helps  to  hang  or  to  release,  quite  as  much 
as  the  nature  of  what  that  respectable  witness  happens 
to  allege.  Parents  and  educators,  let  alone  Govern- 
ments and  Nations  (Tripoli,  Nov.  1911)  are  still  apt 
to  take  ofience  as  if  doubt  of  their  statements  implied 
doubt  of  their  honour.  Authority  is  still  the  basis  of 
parental  as  it  is  of  military  and  sacerdotal  discipline ; 
authority  in  the  sense  of  "  do  you  call  me  a  liar  ?  "  as 
opposed  to  authority  as  presumable  competence  of 
knowing.  And  just  now  the  Pope  has  taken  to  making 
priests  swear  that  Modernism  is  wrong  and  the  old 
theology  is  right,  absolutely  on  the  principle  of  the 
continental  swashbuckler  who  runs  you  through  the 
body  for  "  doubting  his  word,"  or  contradicting  too 
hotly.  And  it  is  not  only  characteristic  but  perhaps 
advantageous  that  such  should  have  become  the  Pope's 
methods  of  carrying  his  point  about,  let  us  say,  the 
authorship  of  the  Gospel  of  St  John. 


184 


Vital  Lies 


MeanwhJe  the  human  mind  will  be  freed  from  super- 
stihon  m  proportion  a8  it  recognizes  that  a  fallacy  need 
not  be  a  l^e,  that  error  ia  more  plentiful  than  truth 
because  error  is  tentative  and  truth  final.    Moreover 
aat  error  when  widespread  implies  no  inteUectual' 
(and  stJl  less  moral)  Obliquity,  since  it  is  nine  times 
out  of  ten  the  inevitable  result  of  haw  we  know  and 
^hcu  we  know     So  that  while  error  may  be  exploited  or 
clung  to  or  artificu^lly  kept  up,  there  is  very  littie  chance 
^  need)  of  ,ts  having  been  invented  on  pipose  to  take 

f!th  Tf  .T  *'^  <^*''*  '"o-  ^  -hat  our  grand- 

fathers called  "Priestcraft,"  would  be  the  reco^tion 
ttat  so  far  from  having  been  fabricated  to  ke^Tth^ 

i;  Plato  T '  ■''?■  "  '^°'*^^^'  '"^^  ^^^''^  - 
Odder),  Plato  also  opmed,  all  myths  are  the  inevitable 

oute^eofthehonestthinkingofagiventimeorp^S? 
Furthermore,  the  most  important  lesson  taught  me 

^ Id  :  ""  "'  "'  ^°"''°"  '''  ^'  ""t  the  un- 

guessed,    usually   unconscious  action   of  habits  and 

desares,  which  close  up  certain  channels  of  thoZt  2 
deepen  others  into  stagnant  pools  without  an  i«ue 

X  have  even    caught    myself    wondering    whether 
Human  hfe  has  reaUy  ever  required  Lies.    But  it  ^ 

hopes  and  consolations  where  there  was  reason  fo^ 

toed  minds  before  they  had  got  to  a  rational  resting- 


Handiwork  of  the  Gods    185 


place,  and  freedom  for  busy  ones  to  think  of  something 
else.  So,  when  all  is  said  and  done.  Vital  Lies  represent 
human  weakness,  human  sloth,  and  human  dullness, 
above  all,  perhaps  human  impatience,  which  cuts  down 
the  tree  to  eat  the  fruits.  In  other  words,  it  seems  as 
if  Vital  Lies  meant  the  need  of  the  moment  and  the 
individual  against  the  need  of  the  race  and  of  the 
future. 

XIII 
Vital  Lies  as  the  Handiwork  op  the  Gods 

And  now,  after  so  much  discussion  with  others  and 
with  myself,  so  much  backwards  and  forwards,  how  do 
I  stand  toward  Vital  Lies  ? 

I  think  thus  : 

Vital  Lies  are  among  the  devices  with  which  the  Gods, 
possibly  blind  (perhaps  because  their  eyes  are  unlike 
ours),  shape  us  and  our  destinies  out  of  the  material  of 
our  own  desires  and  powers.  But  Vital  Lies  are  not 
articles  of  common  or  domestic  utility,  to  be  made  by 
Man  for  Man's  own  using,  still  less  things  which  men 
can  discuss,  and  of  which  they  can  lend  one  another  the 
pattern ! 


CHAPTER  III 

I.  Humanism     ........  186 

n.  Man  the  Measure    .......  189 

IIL  The  Teleology  of  the  Man  and  the  Teleology  of  Universe  194 

IV.  The  Immorality  of  Immortals  and  the  Morals  of  Mortals  199 

V.  The  new  Morality  for  Mortals  .....  201 

VI.  "  Ye  are  the  Salt  of  the  Earth  "  .  .  .  .204 

Vn.  Truth  is  what  does  not  care  what  you  think  of  it           .  205 

Vin.  "And  Man  for  Me,"  etc 207 

IX.  Cui  Bono  ? 209 

X.  Ecce  Deus  fortior  me       .....          .  210 


Humanism 

AND  since  I  am  now  soliloquizing,  saying 
what  has  come    into  my    private  head 
about  vital  truths  and  vital  lies,  it  is  fitting 
I  should  make  a  confession. 

If  I  have  shown,  perad venture,  lack  of  moderation 
and  sweetness  towards  Will-to-believe  Pragmatism,  it  is 
due  in  part  to  the  exasperated  recognition  that  this 
doctrine,  and  these  doctors,  have  distorted  views  which 
are  mine,  or  which  resemble  my  own  :  utilitarianism, 
relativism,  and  the  idea  vaguely  roughed  out  in  the 
saying  that  Man  is  the  Measure  of  All  things.    In  the 

IM 


Humanism 


187 


same  way  that  they  have  wasted,  discredited,  d^rmnetisS, 
as  the  French  say,  removed  out  of  honest  philosophical 
currency,  that  word  Pragmatism,  so  excellently  invented 
by  Mr  C.  S.  Peirce  for  his  method  of  "  making  our  ideas 
clear"  by  inquiring  into  those  ideas'  equivalents  in 
expected  facts  ;  so  also  they,  in  the  person  particularly 
of  Doctor  Schiller,  have  wasted  another  valuable  word, 
"  Humanism,''  by  applying  it,  with  the  Protagorean 
dictum  for  which  my  friend  Alfred  Benn  originally 
invented  it,  to  a  theory  of  "  Making  of  Truth,"  and  its 
correlative  unmaking,  or  destroying  of  truth  when  that 
truth  did  not  happen,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Inquisition, 
to  suit  the  requirements  of  "  Humanity." 

Now  "  Humanism  "  is  the  name  that  could  have  been 
given  to  views  which,  although  not  yet  (and  so  much 
the  better)  formulated  as  a  philosophic  system,  are 
already  arising,  and  must  arise  more  and  more,  with  the 
daily  growth  of  scientific  habits  on  the  one  side,  and  of 
lay  ethics  on  the  other. 

This  humanistic,  as  distinguished  from  arUhropocentric 
view  could  be  roughly  summed  up  as  follows :  Our 
human  interests,  our  thoughts,  are  conditioned  and 
limited  by  our  constitution.  Our  constitution  is 
limited,  qualified  by  the  Universe.  But  the  only  uni- 
verse which  can  exist  for  us  is  the  Universe  which  exists 
through  the  medium  of  those  limitations  and  qualifica- 
tion of  our  constitution.  We  are  our  own  centre  of  the 
Universe,  because  we  cannot  change  our  place  in  the 


Vital  Lies 


Universe.    We  are  the  Measure  of  All  Things,  because 
the  only  things  we  know  of  are  known  with  reference 
to  our  standards.    We  are  more  important  than  the 
rest  of  things,  because  when  we  say  important  we  are 
implying  a  relation  to  ourselves,  a  relation  we  can 
conceive  as  outside  ourselves  only  by  attributing  the 
modes  of  our  own  experience  to  what  exists  beyond  our 
own  experience.    The  Universe  has  made  and  is  still 
making  us.    But  the  only  Universe  we  can  conceive  is 
the  one  constructed  in  our  consciousness.    This  is  the 
conclusion  to  be  drawn,  and  which  many  of  us  have 
drawn,  without  formulating  this  principle  that  the 
importance  of  our  ideas  is  their  importance  to  us,  but 
that  their  importance  to  us  depends  upon  their  repre- 
senting not  our  wishes  and  purposes,  but  rather  the 
something  outside  us  whereby  our  wishes  and  purposes 
are  themselves  originated  and  conditioned.    It  is  to 
this  principle  that  I  have  long  given  in  my  mind  (and 
other  thinkers  have  doubtless  done  alike  in  theirs), 
some  name  like  Humanism. 

So,  as  I  have  just  confessed,  my  quarrel  with  these 
self-styled  Pragmatists  has  been  exasperated  by  the  fact 
of  their  having  deflected  this  principle  of  thought's 
relativity  yet  certainty ;  this  conception  of  the  positive 
importance  and  comparative  unimportance  of  Man's 
standards ;  and  their  having  distorted  it  into  a  sham- 
bling sophistic  that  turns  belief  into  choice  and  truth 
into  expediency ;  a  sophistic  which,  requiring  belief  in 


f\ 


r 


I 


^ii 


I 


Man  the  Measure       189 


truth  for  the  efficacy  of  fallacy  and  falsehood,  is  i'pso 
facto  condemned  to  perpetual  self-contradiction. 

But  instead  of  yielding  to  such  irritation  (and  I 
crave  pardon  for  every  time  I  have  done  so)  one  ought 
rather  to  rejoice  that  the  incoherences  and  tergiversa- 
tions of  this  school  of  so-called  Pragmatists  (includ- 
ing the  Pragmatistic  myth-and-symbol-mongers  and 
Practical  Obscurantists)  may  result  in  more  careful 
criticism  and  more  rigorous  selection  of  that  other  kind 
of  Humanism,  namely,  of  that  conception  of  human 
standards  and  valuations  which,  without  much 
formulations  or  promulgation,  is  being  approached  by 
the  spontaneous  convergence  of  scientific  thought  and 
utilitarian  ethics. 


II 


Man  the  Measure 

While  the  moralists  and  moralizing  logicans  calling 
themselves  Pragmatists  have  given  us  leave  to  deal  in 
Vital  Lies  by  calling  them  truths  so  soon  as  they  seem 
"  better  for  us  to  believe,"  a  more  esoteric  branch  of 
Obscurantists  have  been  telling  each  other  that  Vital 
Lies  are  one  of  the  instruments  by  which  Nature  (some- 
times called  History)  accomplishes  her  designs ;  and 
these  philosophers  (and  each  of  us  philosophers  has  been 
one  such  at  least  in  "  lost  moments !  ")  derive  much 


!■ 


I( 


190 


Vital  Lies 


satisfaction  from  having  so  far  penetrated  the  secret, 
been  admitted  into  the  confidence  of  that  arch- 
Machiavel,  the  Unconscious,  leading  mankind  with 
fallacies,  falsehoods,  superstitions.  Myths,  and  all  that 
magic-lantem  business  of  "  ombres  cTune  ombre." 

But  is  not  this  also  perhaps  a  Vital  Lie,  delightful  to 
our  philosophic  self-importance,  and  necessary,  perhaps, 
to  bridge  the  difficult  transition  from  the  status  of 
priests,  soothsayers,  and  poets,  to  the  less  tempting 
one  of  observers  and  classifiers  of  facts,  and  makers  of 
nothing  much  more  prophetic  than  weather  forecasts  ? 
Are  we  not,  many,  all  of  us  "  thinkers,"  making  up  for 
loss  of  office  round  the  throne  of  the  Almighty,  or  in 
the  dingier  household  of  the  Absolute,  by  this  hinted  at 
intimacy  with  the  Unconscious,  its  "  designs,"  its  lack 
of  "  Morality,"  and  its  especially  reprehensible  (or,  if 
you  prefer,  splendidly  prodigal)  Wastefulness  ? 

For,  in  the  first  place,  how  can  we  be  sure  that  It 
("  Life  "  formerly  known  as  "  Nature  ")  is  Unconscious, 
and  if  Unconscious,  how  can  it  have  designs,  or  be 
moral  or  immoral,  or  economical  or  wasteful  ?  More- 
over, even  supposing  its  unconsciousness  to  be  so 
different  from  any  unconsciousness  of  which  we  have 
experience,  what  right  have  we  to  suppose,  as  our 
chief  philosopher  of  "  Life  "  evidently  does,  that  the 
Unconscious  has  been  toiling  and  travailing  to  elaborate 
Consciousness,  in  plainer  language,  that  "  Life  "  has 
been  organizing  itself  in  view  of  producing  (whatever 


Man  the  Measure       191 


else  besides)  just  you  and  me  ?    For  unless  that  pro- 
duction of  something  most  uncommonly  like  present 
mankind  had  been  one  at  least  of  Nature's  or  Life's 
''  aims,"  we  have  no  right,  surely,  to  call  it  immoral 
when  it  does  not  conform  to  our  morality,  and  still  leas 
wasteful,  when  it  launches  out  into  expenditure  (let  us 
say  in  microbes)  which  we,  personally,  should  have 
avoided.  For  this  much  does  seem  plain,  that  while  all  ex- 
perience  and  notion  of  "  designs,"  "  plan,"  "  intention," 
"  conduct "  (whence  moral  and  immoral,  wasteful  and 
economic),    are   taken   from   ourselves   and   are   not 
necessarily  applicable  beyond  ourselves;    the  plans, 
designs,  and  modes  of  conduct  of  anything  so  different 
from  us  as  "  Nature  "  or  "  Life,"  always  supposing 
*'  Nature  "  or  "  Life  "  to  have  any,  would  evidently 
be  as  different  from  ours  as  Nature  or  Life  is  different 
from  us,  the  plans  of  the  "  Whole  "  would  surely  be  wider 
than  those  of  the  "  Part,"  and  the  methods  of  the 
Unconscious  could  scarcely  be  judged,  still  less  profit- 
ably adopted,  by  the  Conscious. 

For  that  is  what  it  comes  to.  Not  so  much  that 
we  want,  like  Milton,  "  to  justify  the  ways  of  God 
to  man,"  but  rather  to  justify  the  ways  of  man  by 
those  of  .  .  .  well,  whatever  modern  philosophy 
may  call  the  more  constitutional  successor  of  God. 
For  instance,  in  this  small  matter  of  Vital  Lies, 
alias  myths.  That  mankind  has  blundered  through  a 
vast  number  of  mistakes,  false  analogies,  wrong  classi- 


192 


Vital  Lies 


fications,  partial  deductions  and  more  partial  induc- 
tions, quid  pro  quos  and  (to  suit  the  words  to  the  study 
of  "  Les  Formes  prelogiques  de  I'lntelligence  ")  coqs  d 
Vdne,  as  shown  in  Totemism,  and  that,  moreover,  some 
good  results  may  have  occurred  such  as  sundry  pro- 
hibitions, purifications,  and  a  general  law-abidingness, 
from  this  blundering,  all  this  suggests  to  some  philo- 
sophical minds,  such  as  Mr  Crawley,  and  M. 
Sorel's,  or  let  alone  Kenan's,  that  since  myths  and 
superstitions  have  been  good  enough  for  the  Uncon- 
scious in  its  historical  and  prehistorical  dealings  with 
mankind,  mankind  or  those  enlightened  classes  or 
individuals  possessing  the  Unconscious'  secrets,  need 
not,  in  their  turn,  be  too  fine  to  use  them.  "  What 
God  could  dare  to  give,  he  dares  to  name,"  wrote  Young 
of  some  eighteenth-century  Walt  Whitman  ;  which  we 
may  paraphrase  :  What  Nature,  Life,  History,  Fate  (or 
any  other  of  the  aliases  of  the  Unconscious)  dared  to 
invent  in  order  to  make  men  moral  and  self-restraining 
and  heroic,  surely  Mr  Crawley  may  support,  or 
M.  Sorel  may  preach,  in  order  to  keep  up  that  output 
of  morality,  self-restraint  and  self-sacrifice,  without 
stickling  with  such  purely  human  precepts  as  that 
which  bids  us  tell  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth. 

Now  here  I  must  return  to  my  previous  remark, 
namely,  its  being  a  mere  human  assumption  to  ascribe 
designs  and  methods  to  anything  beyond  human  beings 
and  animals  greatly  resembling  them ;   and  secondly, 


Man  the  Measure       193 

its  being  quite  illogical,  once  such  designs  and  methods 
have  been  ascribed  to  the  Unconscious,  to  imagine  that 
the  benefit  or  edification,  or  even  the  production  of  man- 
kind, was  precisely  what  those  aims  and  methods  in- 
tended to  compass.     Indeed,  what  we  call  the  Waste- 
fulness of  Nature  is  surely  a  proof  that  if  Nature  was 
aiming  at  anything,  it  was  not  at  pleasing  the  creatures 
whose  life  and  pain  she  made  so  free  with :    we  our- 
selves do  not  call    it   wastefulness    when  we    breed 
cattle  for  the  sake  of  their  flesh  and  hides,  though  the 
cattle  assuredly  must  consider  our  methods  of  feeding 
and  shoeing  ourselves  excessively  wasteful.    Hence, 
there  is  nothing  to  tell  us  that  when  the  Unconscious 
lavished  centuries-full   of   human  mistake   and  dis- 
appointment this  was  really  to  the  end  that  these 
superstitions  and  myths  should  result  in  morality, 
heroism,  or  saintliness.    The  Unconscious  may  have 
been  thinking  of  something  quite  different,  and  human 
morality,  heroism,  and  saintliness  have  been,  in  its  eyes 
(since  the  Unconscious    is  full  of   inchoate  faculties) 
mere  waste  products,  rubbish,  slag,  or  shavings  from 
some  other  bit  of  work. 

Whence  I  conclude  that  we  had  better  not  take 
example  save  by  ourselves,  and  better  stick  to  one  of  the 
few  educative  certainties  we  possess,  namely,  that  human 
morality,  whether  intentionally  or  unintentionally  pro- 
duced, is  useful,  indispensable  to  Man ;  that  human 
logical  habits  are  similarly  requisite,  and  that  one  of  the 

2n 


•«fS«IP 


194 


Vital  Lies 


'1- 


I 


items  evolved  by  human  morality  and  human  logic  is  a 
respect  for  truth  as  such  due  to  the  fact  that  where  we 
do  not  believe  that  a  statement  is  true  we  refuse  to  act 
upon  it.  0  small  fellow  human  beings,  we  are  a  very 
microscopic,  and  perhaps  quite  negligible,  portion  of 
the  Universe  ;  but  we  are  the  portion  we  happen  to  be 
directly  concerned  with,  and  the  only  one  through 
which  we  can,  moreover,  approach,  interpret,  the  rest. 
Man  is  legitimately  his  own,  since  he  is  his  only  measure 
of  all  things,  so  long  as  he  bears  in  mind  that  the  instru- 
ment of  mensuration  may  be  "  out  "  by  a  few  millions 
of  degrees. 

Man  is  certainly  not  the  centre  of  all  things,  but  I 
do  not  see  what  else  is  to  be  his  centre  save  himself ! 


Ill 


The  Teleology  of  Man,  and  the  Teleology  op  the 

Universe 

In  connection  with  such  views  it  is  as  well  to  recon- 
sider the  subject  of  teleology,  with  which  latter-day 
obscurantism  does  a  good  deal  of  conjuring.' 

I  conceive  that  the  universe  might  do  without  any 
intelligence  outside  it,  and  yet  contain  and  require 
mtelligence,  or  rather  let  us  call  it  consciousness,  inside 
it    Indeed  the  presence  of  consciousness  in  creatures. 


/ 


I 


The  Teleology  of  Man    195 

so  far  from  proving,  makes  it  easier  to  dispense  with, 
the  notion  of  consciousness  in  some  sort  of  Creator.  For 
such  existing  consciousness  explains  details  in  evolu- 
tion which  would  remain  obscure  in  its  absence. 
According  to  this  view,  which  is  mine,  the  production 
or  development  of  consciousness  from  some  rudiment 
thereof  inherent  in  living,  who  knows,  in  inorganic 
matter,  would  be  a  part  of  the  automatic  modus  operandi 
of  the  cosmic  mechanism ;  feeling  in  its  most  rudi- 
mentary forms,  attraction,  and  repulsion,  mere  crude 
preference  and  aversion,  being  part  of  the  stufE  acted  on 
by  unconscious  selection,  and  reacting  on  what  we  call 
the  materiality  of  things  by  determining  some  of  its 
groupings  and  shapings.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  presence 
of  consciousness  in  the  universe,  so  far  from  loosening 
the  chain  of  causation,  in  reality  tightens  it ;  for  feeling 
and  knowing  are  the  most  easily  recognized  of  all 
determinants,  indeed  the  only  determinant  that  is  not 
a  mere  inference  ;  we  see  a  stone  fall  or  a  kettle  rise,  and 
infer  cause  and  effect,  but  we  feel  our  preferences  and 
aversions  pushing  in  one  direction  rather  than  another  ; 
we  feel  cause  and  effect  in  ourselves. 
Pope's  famous  lines  : — 

"  And  binding  Nature  tight  in  Fate 
Left  free  the  human  will," 

are  so  far  wrong  that  the  only  Fate,  the  only  necessary 
sequence  of  which  we  have  direct  knowledge,  is  precisely 


■ 


1 

t! 


196 


Vital  Lies 


that  of  our  own  feelings  and  volitions  ;  and  if  we  had 
no  such  experience  of  causal  sequence  in  ourselves,  we 
should  not  be  able  to  attribute  it  to  the  outer  world ; 
there  would  be  sequence,  comcident  and  usual  sequence, 
but  not  Fate,  since  Fate  implies  inevitable  causation. 
As  it  is  with  determinism,  so  it  is  with  teleology. 
To  say  that  there  is  no  teleology  in  the  outer  universe 
may  be  a  rash  statement,  but  rash  or  not  rash,  it  does 
not  imply  that  there  is  no  teleology  in  the  human 
consciousness ;  indeed  here  again,  as  in  the  case  of 
determinism,  the  only  teleology  of  which  we  can  be 
quite  sure  is  precisely  in  the  human  consciousness,  and 
more  particularly  in  yours  or  mine.  Any  other  is  at 
best,  an  inference,  correct  or  incorrect,  but  most  often 
it  is  a  mere  metaphorical  mode  of  speech,  a  case  of  what 
psychological  aesthetics  call  Empathy,  or  projection  of 
human  modes  of  being  into  outer  forms  or  objects. 

With  regard  to  any  teleology  outside  of  direct  human 
self-experience  it  is  important  to  recognize  that  such 
intention,  inferred  from  our  own  experience,  and 
attributed,  logically  or  merely  poetically,  to  what  we 
call  the  universe,  is  an  intention  or  set  of  intentions^ 
which  need  not  in  the  least  coincide  with  the  intentions 
we  are  aware  of  in  ourselves.  What  we  interpret  as 
intentions  in  nature  are  tendencies  which  condition  and 
limit  one  another  ;  or  more  correctly,  we  human  beings, 
whenever  we  find  one  of  our  own  bona  fide  (because  felt) 
tendencies  checked  or  deflected,  instantly  suppose  that 


i 

i 


■Ml 


The  Teleology  of  Man    197 

this  can  Jmppen  only  by  the  intervention  of  some  inten- 
tion different  from  the  one  of  which  we  are  ourselves 
conscious.  And  by  this  system  of  inferences,  more  or 
less  metaphorical  and  anthropomorphic,  we  get  to  think 
of  a  number  of  Wills,  separate  from,  but  coercing  our 
own  :  the  Will  of  the  Race,  the  Will  of  the  Universe,  let 
alone  the  more  venerable  or  old-fashioned  Will  of  God ; 
Wills  all  thought  of  on  the  pattern  of  those  of  our 
family  and  nation,  limiting  our  own  teleology,  and 
obliging  us  to  fulfil  our  own  intentions  by  conformity 
with  their  larger  and  more  powerful  ones. 

Now,  once  we  have  made  it  clear  to  ourselves  that  all 
this  talk  of  other  Wills  than  our  own  is  a  mere  metaphor, 
and  may  possibly  be  a  totally  misleading  one,  there  is  no 
objection  to  continuing  to  talk  about  Teleology  and  to 
examining  into  a  possible  order  or  hierarchy  of  these 
various  metaphorical  or  metaphysical  Wills.  We 
should,  then,  recognize  that  the  Will  of  the  Individual 
(about  which,  when  it  is  yours  or  mine  we  do  happen  to 
be  sure)  is  not  necessarily  directed  to  the  same  aims 
as  is  the  Will  (supposing  there  to  be  one)  of  the  Race  ; 
still  less  to  the  same  aims  as  would  be  the  Will  (if  Will 
there  were)  of  the  Cosmos,  or  of  God  Almighty.  For 
the  Will  of  the  Individual  aims  at  comfort,  meaning 
thereby  a  minimum  of  thwarting  and  a  maximum  of 
satisfaction  of  all  possible  desires.  The  Will  of  the 
Race  or  Species  would  aim  at  survival,  since  to  that  it 
sacrifices  everything  else  by  natui-al  selection.    And 


196 


Vital  Lies 


that  of  our  own  feelings  and  volitions ;  and  if  we  had 
no  such  experience  of  causal  sequence  in  ourselves,  we 
should  not  be  able  to  attribute  it  to  the  outer  world ; 
there  would  be  sequence,  coincident  and  usual  sequence, 
but  not  i^ote,  since  Fate  implies  inevitable  causation. 
As  it  is  with  determinism,  so  it  is  with  teleology. 
To  say  that  there  is  no  teleology  in  the  outer  universe 
may  be  a  rash  statement,  but  rash  or  not  rash,  it  does 
not  imply  that  there  is  no  teleology  in  the  human 
consciousness ;  indeed  here  again,  as  in  the  case  of 
determinism,  the  only  teleology  of  which  we  can  be 
quite  sure  is  precisely  in  the  human  consciousness,  and 
more  particularly  in  yours  or  mine.    Any  other  is  at 
best,  an  inference,  correct  or  incorrect,  but  moat  often 
it  is  a  mere  metaphorical  mode  of  speech,  a  case  of  what 
psychological  aesthetics  call  Empathy,  or  projection  of 
human  modes  of  being  into  outer  forms  or  objects. 

With  regard  to  any  teleology  outside  of  direct  human 
self-experience  it  is  important  to  recognize  that  such 
intention,  inferred  from  our  own  experience,  and 
attributed,  logically  or  merely  poetically,  to  what  we 
call  the  universe,  is  an  intention  or  set  of  intentions, 
which  need  not  in  the  least  coincide  with  the  intentions 
we  are  aware  of  in  ourselves.  What  we  interpret  as 
intentions  in  nature  are  tendencies  which  condition  and 
limit  one  another  ;  or  more  correctly,  we  human  beings, 
whenever  we  find  one  of  our  own  bona  fide  (because  felt) 
tendencies  checked  or  deflected,  instantly  suppose  that 


The  Teleology  of  Man    197 

this  can  Jiappen  only  by  the  intervention  of  some  inten- 
tion different  from  the  one  of  which  we  are  ourselves 
conscious.  And  by  this  system  of  inferences,  more  or 
less  metaphorical  and  anthropomorphic,  we  get  to  think 
of  a  number  of  Wills,  separate  from,  but  coercing  our 
own  :  the  Will  of  the  Race,  the  Will  of  the  Universe,  let 
alone  the  more  venerable  or  old-fashioned  Will  of  God  ; 
Wills  all  thought  of  on  the  pattern  of  those  of  our 
family  and  nation,  limiting  our  own  teleology,  and 
obliging  us  to  fulfil  our  own  intentions  by  conformity 
with  their  larger  and  more  powerful  ones. 

Now,  once  we  have  made  it  clear  to  ourselves  that  all 
this  talk  of  other  Wills  than  our  own  is  a  mere  metaphor, 
and  may  possibly  be  a  totally  misleading  one,  there  is  no 
objection  to  continuing  to  talk  about  Teleology  and  to 
examining  into  a  possible  order  or  hierarchy  of  these 
various  metaphorical  or  metaphysical  Wills.  We 
should,  then,  recognize  that  the  Will  of  the  Individual 
(about  which,  when  it  is  yours  or  mine  we  do  happen  to 
be  sure)  is  not  necessarily  directed  to  the  same  aims 
as  is  the  Will  (supposing  there  to  be  one)  of  the  Race  ; 
still  less  to  the  same  aims  as  would  be  the  Will  (if  Will 
there  were)  of  the  Cosmos,  or  of  God  Almighty.  For 
the  Will  of  the  Individual  aims  at  comfort,  meaning 
thereby  a  minimum  of  thwarting  and  a  maximum  of 
satisfaction  of  all  possible  desires.  The  Will  of  the 
Race  or  Species  would  aim  at  survival,  since  to  that  it 
sacrifices  ever3rthing  else  by  natural  selection.    And 


198 


Vital  Lies 


the  Will  of  the  Universe  or  of  the  Divinity  would  aim, 
if  one  may  use  such  a  word  in  such  a  context,  at  mere 
existence,  the  whole,  or  omnipotence,  being  unable  to 
will  anything  that  it  is  not ;  God  having  theologically 
defined  himself  by  the  mere  first  person  present  of  the 
verb  to  6c,  and  the  universe    being   philosophically 
definable  as  the  third  person  of  that  same  all-including 
yet  empty  form  of  speech.     Hence  we  get  a  meta- 
phorical or  metaphysical  consideration  of  Wills  actually 
feU  (to  wit,  our  own)  and  Wills  inferred  or  imagined. 
And  this  concentric  arrangement  is  as  follows  :  the  Aim 
of  the  Race  selects  among  the  aims  of  the  individual, 
among  the  proceedings  which  aim  at  his  own  comfort ; 
the  teleology  of    the   Race  kills  or  breeds;  it  uses 
or  refuses  individual's  various  desires  for  its  sole  end  of 
Race    survival.     I  say  Race  survival,  because  race- 
improvemerU  is  an  aim  of,  and  a  shifting  definition  of, 
the  cattle-breeder  or  the  moralist,  and  race-survival 
may  be  attained  by  what  both  these  persons  would  call 
deterioration  or  regression.    And  the  teleology  of  the 
Universe  in  its  turn  selects  among  the  various  race 
teleologies,  to  the  end  (already  attained)  of  the  universe 
subsisting. 

This  schematic  arrangement  is  interesting  and 
perhaps  instructive,  but  on  one  condition  :  if  we  re- 
member that  of  all  these  three  Teleologies  or  Wills,  two 
are  mere  metaphors,  mere  attributions  of  our  modes 
to  what  is  unlike  ourselves;  but  the  third  is  a  real 


; 


4 


•!        f 


Immorality  of  Immortals    199 

Teleology,  a  real  purposefulness,  a  real  choosing  of 
what-hurts-least  or  pleases  most ;  and  that  teleology 
is  Marl's. 

The  deterministic  view  of  human  progress  ia,  there- 
fore, that  such  progress  is  compassed  not  by  seeking 
any  final  "  good,"  still  less  by  any  remote  intention  of 
co-operating  with  the  Race  or  the  Universe,  but  by  the 
conscious  and  unconscious  shifting  of  our  burden  of 
desire  and  discomfort.  If  the  individual  subserves,  as 
he  calls  it,  consciously  and  willingly,  the  safety  and 
progress  of  the  race,  this  is  inasmuch  as  the  safety  and 
progress  of  the  race  are  objects  of  his  thoughts  and 
desires, the  race  is  part  of  himself;  nay, the  universe 
also,  because  the  race  and  the  universe  for  which  he  is 
ready  to  sacrifice  smaller  satisfactions  are  part  of  his 
present  consciousness,  and  inasmuch  conducive  to  his 
greater  satisfactions  or  dissatisfactions. 


IV 


The  Immorality  of  Immortals  and  the  Morals  of 

Mortals 

Despite  all  myth-and-symbol-mongering,  and  despite 
the  various  pragmatistic  subterfuges,  both  such  as 
philosophy  prefers  ("  just  the  thing  that  you  want  "), 
and  such  as  our  individual  unreasoning  hurry  and 


200 


Vital  Lies 


feebleness  can  furnish  forth,  there  are,  it  seems  to  me, 
certain  recognitions  which  reality  will  gradually  force 
upon  us,  and  indeed  is  already  forcing. 

First  and  foremost,  that  we  human  creatures  are  only 
a  tiny  portion  of  Reality,  and  that  Reality's  methods, 
even  those  by  which  it  has  made  us,  are  not  necessarily 
the  ones  which  our  own  omnipotent  superfineness  would 
have  adopted.    We  shall  have  to  admit  that  the  process 
of  evolution  and  selection  that  has  made  our  morality  is 
as  unintelligent  and  ruthless  as  the  one  to  which  we  owe 
our  bodily  structure  and  functions,  is,  in  fact,  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  same  process.    The  admission  will  cost 
some  pangs.    More  difficult  even  to  admit  will  be  that, 
despite  such  horrid  origins,  morality  is  "  good  "  and 
tends  to  even  greater  goodness.    This  will  be  even  more 
difficult  to  recognize,  because  while  the  majority  of 
mankind  shirk  the  thought  of  what  is  highest  and  most 
venerable  being  produced  by  every  kind  of  evil,  the 
minority  shudder  away  from  the  claims  of  a  moral  code 
which  has  been  elaborated  by  cruelty  and  stupidity,  by 
perfunctory  selfishness,  and  (as  we  see  in  the  case  of 
our  taboo-bom  prohibitions),  by  ludicrous  blunders. 
Anarchic    religious    mysticism    has,    throughout    the 
centuries  of  faith,  made  light  of  the  commandments, 
blotted  out  good  and  evil ;  and  nowadays  we  can  watch 
the  law-breaking  moralists  extending,  like  Dostoiefsky, 
brotherly  arms  to  those  who,  while  victimizing  their 
neighbours,  are  themselves  victims  of  Nature  by  Fate. 


A 


New  Morality  of  Mortals    20 


I 


But  in  proportion  as  we  face  things  as  they  are,  and 
not  as  we  should  like  them  to  be,  we  shall  gradually 
recognize  that  whatever  infringement  of  our  moral 
preferences  may  have  been  needed  for  the  elaboration  of 
OUT  moral  codes  and  ideals,  these  are,  on  the  whole,  the 
best  and  most  improvable  among  our  possessions,  and 
one  of  the  safest  means  to  the  gradual  elimination  of 
those  very  processes  of  human  stupidity  and  brutality 
which  have  been  active  in  their  production. 

Thus,  for  instance,  though  the  Blind  Immortals 
(blind  because  their  eyes  are  not  fixed  solely  on  our  small 
selves)  have  apparently  found  it  necessary  to  lead 
mankind  along  by  lies  and  false  promises,  mankind,  thus 
led,  has  had  to  recognize  that,  whatever  the  Gods  of  the 
Universe  may  permit  themselves,  it — ^that  is  to  say,  you, 
I,  and  all  our  neighbours— had  best  deal  as  little  as 
possible  in  statements  which  we  know  to  be  false,  and 
in  promises  which  we  do  not  intend  to  keep. 


The  New  Morality  of  Mortals 

Perhaps  there  may  be  the  foundation  for  a  new 
morality  for  mortals  (as  distinguished  from  World  Wills 
and  Race  Wills  and  other  divinities)  in  the  recognition 
by  parents  and  guardians  that  you  have  to  teach 


l 


202 


Vital  Lies 


children   to   consider  things   as   naughty   when   they 
happen  to  be  inconvenient,  merely  because  there  is  no 
time  to  go  into  whys  and  wherefores,  but  without  there- 
fore invoking  the  sanction  of  those  gods  or  chimney- 
sweeps who  presided  over  the  morals  of  our  remote 
infancy.     In  other  words,  a  new  ethical  attitude  of 
recognizing  that  our  moral  preferences  are  not  neces- 
sarily shared  by  the  Cosmos,  nor  by  all  our  fellow- 
creatures,  nor  by  our  ancestors  and  descendants  even  to 
the  seventh  generation,  but  that  it  is  nevertheless  need- 
ful that  we,  being  what  and  where  and  how  we  are, 
should  give  these  moral  preferences  paramount  im- 
portance.    Such  an  ethical  attitude  would  recognize  all 
the  self-seekings  which  make  us  act,  and  recognize  at 
the   same  time  that  we   must  frequently  counteract 
them ;   that  the  world  is  moved  by  appetite  and  self- 
interest,  and  for  this  very  reason  curb  appetite  and 
purge  interest  of  its  selfishness ;    that  all  codes  and 
institutions  are  provisional,  perishable,  mixed  up  of 
advantage  and  drawback,   and  that  we  must  alter 
and  at  the  same  time  respect  them.    Above  all,  such 
an  attitude  would  take  for  granted  that  Nature  snaps 
her  fingers  at  us,  and  yet  that  we  must  not  snap  our 
fingers  at  Nature. 

Such  a  new  ethical  and  (philosophical)  attitude  would 
mean  the  possession  of  a  rare  and  delicate  accomplish- 
ment, namely,  of  intellectually  and  morally  balancing 
ourselves,  which  we  shall  have,  however  difficult,  to 


New  Morality  of  Mortals    203 

learn  :  Balancing  and  looking  both  to  the  right  and  to 
the  left,  casting  our  glance  forwards  and  backwards 
and  all  round  us.  For  we  shall  have  to  take  account 
of  what  seem  contradictions,  but  are  in  reality  only 
countervailing  consequences ;  for  instance,  that  the 
Ego  and  the  Present  are  the  only  real  existences  and 
yet  must  perpetually  sacrifice  themselves  to  the  AUer 
and  the  Future,  these  being  in  truth  but  a  prolongation 
of  them  in  their  own  thought,  a  part  of  their  own  mental 
contents,  and  their  sole  practical  and  moral  touchstone. 

All  this  will  have  to  be  learnt,  is  beginning  to  be 
learned  already ;  but  'tis  a  slow  and  laborious  job  at 
best. 

It  was  far  easier  and  more  convenient  immediately 
(though  perhaps  not  always  in  the  long  run)  to  talk  of 
ourselves  (as  we  were  talked  to)  as  "  Your  Father,"  or 
"  Your  Mother "  with  a  religious  impersonality  of 
intonation,  ignoring  all  possibility  of  imperfections. 
Easier  and  more  convenient  also  to  consider  the  Nation, 
the  State,  as  something  transcending  both  the  tax- 
payers and  the  officials ;  far  easier  and  more  immediately 
convenient  to  set  our  likings  and  dislikings  ad  dexteram 
Domini,  and  consider  that  the  Universe  was  made  for 
Man,  and  Man  was  made  by  God. 

Far  easier  and  more  convenient ;  particularly  when 
dealing  with  children,  servants,  and  the  lower  classes  ; 
and  easier  and  more  convenient  to  bear  in  mind  our- 
selves.   Unfortunately,    these    easy  and    convenient 


204 


Vital  Lies 


Pi 

I  1 1 


methods  did  not  correspond  to  the  reality  of  things. 
And  hence,  despite  the  best  will  in  the  world,  and 
especially  the  best  Will  to  Believe  and  To-Make-others- 
Believe,  there  was  a  continual  queer  leakage  in 
human  ethics  and  politics,  and  a  disquieting  breaking 
off  short.  .  .  . 


VI 


(( 


Ye  are  the  Salt  op  the  Earth 


j» 


And  to  begin  with  us  Thinkers,  who  all  think  (what- 
ever our  other  divergences)  of  ourselves  as  that  salt 
wherewith  the  insipid  and  indigestible  human  mass 
needs  to  be  salted.  Given  this  undisputed  fact,  there  are 
one  or  two  precautions  which  might  be  commended  to 
ourselves,  to  the  purpose  that  we  lose  not  our  savour, 
become  good  for  nothing,  and  be  cast  out  and  trodden 
under  foot  of  men. 

These  precautions  for  keeping  our  salty  virtues  might 
be  summed  up  as  follows :  Try  to  bear  in  mind  and 
reconcile  the  two  main  facts  of  life :  To-day  and  To- 
morrow ;  or,  if  you  prefer.  What  is  with  what  ought  to  be. 
Recognize  the  reality  of  things  without  therefore 
accepting  (a  la  Whitman)  their  desirableness.  Obey  a 
law  while  taking  steps  to  change  it.  Possess  an  esoteric 
ethic,  but  not  a  secret  one.  Declare  openly  to  our 
neighbours  that  we  have  in  this  matter  or  that  passed 


Truth 


205 


beyond  them,  but  recognize  that  though  they  will  stand 
to-morrow  where  we  are  standing  to-day,  it  is  natural 
and  useful  that  they  should  meanwhile,  try  to  check  our 
progress.  Criticize,  combat,  and  welcome  criticizm 
and  combat,  select  rigorously,  and  accept  rigorous 
selecting  of  ourselves.  With  this  would  naturally  go : 
make  no  use  of  Vital  Lies ;  they  are  vital  and  useful 
only  when  they  are  honestly  accepted  as  vital  truths. 

These,  and  doubtless  other  precautions  might  secure 
the  Salt  of  the  Earth  against  loss  of  savour.  But 
then,  it  would  have  to  begin  with  being  such  salt ; 
and  are  we  really  any  of  us  anjiihing  except  lumps,  more 
or  less  insufficiently  salted,  of  the  stale,  yet  fairly 
nourishing,  dough  of  common  humanity  ? 


VII 


Truth  is  what  does  not  care  what  you  think  of  it 

Let  us  be  truthful,  if  possible,  even  about  the  hve  of 
truth,  and  discard  the  heroics  of  the  professional 
prophets,  who,  like  Nietzsche  and  Tolstoi,  think  they 
are  manfully  facing  the  whole  truth  because  they  are 
pinning  their  attention  to  some  aspect  of  Reality 
which  inflicts  pam  on  themselves,  and  through  them, 
on  their  neighbours. 

Reality  is  not  a  thing  to  which  we  can  say,  whether 


2o6 


Vital  Lies 


a 


And  Man  for  me/'      207 


if 

■) 


\ 


with  jubilation  or  lamentation,  yes  or  no.  It  is  a  thing 
which  forces  itself  upon  us,  just  because  it  is  reality. 
And  perhaps  intellectual  manners  and  morals,  at  some 
distant  day,  may  turn  looking  things  in  the  face  from  a 
heroic  counsel  of  perfection  into  a  precept  of  common 
sense.  As  matters  stand  at  present  the  love  of  truth 
is  oftenest  an  unconscious  excuse  for  the  itch  of  self- 
assertion,  the  lust  for  inflicting  pain  even  on  oneself ; 
or  else  for  some  misplaced  taste  for  aesthetic  effects 
"  power,"  "distinction  "  (Nietzsche's  Vornehme),  and 
generally  speaking,  what  your  low  bred  neighbours 
cannot  attain. 

Truth,  or,  I  should  rather  say,  Reality,  or  plainly, 
"  What  exists  whether  we  like  it  or  not,"  is  a  far  less 
satisfactory  affair.  I  mean  less  satisfactory  to  the 
heroic,  or  dramatic,  or  elegiac  instincts  of  thinkers. 
And  the  most  unsatisfactory  peculiarity  about  Truth  is 
that,  happening  {jxice  Pragmatists  !)  to  be  independent 
of  you, it  maybe  agreeable  or  disagreeable  or  indifferent, 
or  all  three  turn  about,  instead  of  being  pre-arranged 
to  afford  you,  even  (as  in  lover's  quarrels)  by  its  in- 
difference, desirable  opportunities  of  pure  joy,  pure 
sorrow,  heroic  rebellion  or  stoical  acquiescence,  indeed 
any  fine  definite  feelings.  We — you  and  I,  and  every 
one  of  us — are  neither  the  splendid  champions  nor  the 
sombre  adversaries  ("  de  la  realite  grands  esprits  con- 
tempteurs,"  wrote  Baudelaise  of  certain  scandalous 
sinners)  of  Reality.    We  are  only  a  tiny  scrap  of  it,  de- 


tached from  the  rest  only  inasmuch  as  it  is  forced  upon 
our  knowledge  as  something  independent  of  us.  And  the 
difficult,  useful,  sensible,  but  also,  alas  !  the  uninterest- 
ing task  is  to  recognize  Reality  as  nearly  as  possible  what 
it  is,  that  is  to  say,  as  something  infinitely  bigger  than 
yourself,  infinitely  more  complex,  infinitely  more  old 
established  and  long  enduring,  infinitely  regardless  of 
your  likings  and  your  posturings  ;  and,  which,  as  you 
are  part  of  it,  allows  you  to  live  and  have  your  wishes 
only  by  recognizing  its  independence  of  you. 

And  here  I  would  venture  an  additional  attempt  at 
defining  truth.  Truth  is  that  which  does  not  care  a 
button  what  you  think  of  it. 


VIII 

"And  man  for  me,"  exclaimed  a  pampered  goose. — Popb. 

"  To  the  stimulus  of  light,"  (so  I  read  in  a  book  of 
biology),^  "  the  plant  answers  by  unfolding  its  leaves, 
to  the  chemical  stimulus  by  changes  in  assimilation 
and  elimination;  to  the  stimulus  of  temperature 
by  acceleration  of  its  processes  of  growth." 

All  that  whirling  cosmos  of  give-and-take  even  in  a 

1  Richard  Semon's  Mneme,  a  book  which,  modestly  studying  the 
relations  and  equivalences  between  heredity,  growth,  and  memory, 
has  given  us  a  new  schematic  vocabulary  enabling  us  at  last  to 
think  clearly  on  these  and  many  other  scientific  and  philosophical 
points. 


fe 


208 


Vital  Lies 


Cui  Bono? 


209 


ll 


plant,  in  the  tiniest  weed  on  the  meanest  duck-pond. 
And  in  the  face  of  this  mjniad-activity  we  think  it 
necessary  to  invoke  copies  of  our  Will,  to  furnish 
pattern  sheets  of  our  purposes  and  preferences  for  the 
Universe's  explanation !  How  blind,  deaf,  and  stolid 
has  this  will  of  ours,  this  purpose,  this  right-and- wrong 
of  ours,  made  us,  starving  our  potential  perceptions, 
atrophying  our  imagination  and  our  reason  down  to 
the  narrow  needs  of  our  own  survival !  How  it  has 
reduced  us  to  recognizing  only  ourselves  as  active  in  this 
thousandfold  activity,  allowing  us  to  think  such 
infinite  change  only  in  the  terms  of  our  half-dozen 
changes  of  consciousness ! 

Worse  than  that ;  our  practical  preoccupations  have 
tried  to  put  blinkers  to  those  eyes  of  ours  which  at  best 
cannot  see  our  own  ears,  and  bid  our  poor  powers 
of  thinking  to  think  only  such  thoughts  as  may  be 
immediately  available.  What  I  have  dealt  with  in 
this  volume  under  the  lamentably  debased  name  of 
Pragmatism  is  the  philosophy  of  limiting  down  our 
thoughts  within  the  narrowest  practicality  of  all,  that  of 
individual  consolation  and  of  social  convenience,  of 
"  What  it  would  be  better  to  believe." 

The  same  philosophy  (like  most  other  philosophies) 
talks  very  big  of  the  need,  for  our  spiritual  worthiness, 
of  a  belief  in  free  wiQ  and  immortality,  a  belief  in  some- 
thing transcending  ourselves. 

Now  such  a  belief  in  what  transcends  our  ephemeral 


pettiness  is  indeed  requisite  to  save  our  intellectual  eye- 
sight, our  logical  and  imaginative  muscle,  our  whole 
spiritual  life.  But  that  something,  transcending  our 
whole  smallness,  is  the  network  of  relations  inde- 
pendent of  our  convenience  and  our  wishes,  which  we 
call  Reality.  And  the  belief  in  such  existence  trans- 
scending  and  continuing  our  own,  that  belief  is  mani- 
fested in  the  humble  and  heroic  habit  of  seeking  and 
accepting  truth. 


IX 


Cm  Bono  ? 

There  is  a  sense  for  ever  growing  in  me,  of  the  utter 
lack  of  aim  in  life  as  such,  or  rather  of  the  illusory 
nature,  the  perfunctoriness  of  the  various  aims  which 
we  clap  variously  on  to  life's  various  pieces.     But  with 
this  sense  there  grows,  even  stronger  and  more  unfailing, 
the  conviction  that  this  should  not  make  us  doubt  of 
life's  value  to  ourselves,  or  of  life's  greatness  in  itself. 
Far  from  it ;  for  if  our  aims  are  illusion,  is  this  not  a 
sign  of  life's  sufficiency,  of  our  living  through  life's  (that 
is,  our  own)  imperious  constitution  ?    It  is  life's  own 
necessities  and  powers,  obscure,  disguised,  imperative, 
leading  to  those  acts,  feelings,  thoughts,  which  reflective 
reason  tries  vainly  to  explain  and  legitimate  by  aitns. 
Nay,  this  very  seeking  for  aims,  this  criticism  and  in- 

20 


2IO 


Vital  Lies 


''  Ecce  Deus  Fortior  Me  "    211 


« 


h 


terference  of  reason,  is  but  another  manifestation  of 
those  seemingly,  those  possibly,  aimless  necessities 
and  powers  of  things. 

For  what  are  we  living  ?    Answer  me  first  for  what 
are  the  atoms  attracting  one  another,  the  moisture 
condensing  on  the  earth  and  evaporating  off  its  surface, 
spreading  the  loam  and  carving  the  rocks ;   for  what 
are  the  chalk  animalcules  laying  down  continents,  and 
the  coral  insects  building  up  islands  all  through  the 
ages  ?    For  what  is  the  flower-pollen  being  carried  on 
the  winds,  for  what  is  the  carcass  of  the  beasts  giving 
back  to  the  soil  the  elements  which  it  took  from  it  ? 
For  nothing :  But  because  of  everything.    And  for 
what  do  we  think,  and  thinking,  ask  such  questions, 
except  because  thinking  and  asking  are  modes  of  our 
living.    And  if  we  go  on  thinking  long  enough,  we  may 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  "  to  what  purpose  ?  "  is  a 
question  which  man  has  the  right  to  ask  only  of  his  own 
doings,  but  has,  with  regard  to  them,  the  duty  of 
asking  it  rather  more  critically  at  times,  than  he  does. 


"  Ecce  Deus  Fortior  Me  " 

Admitting,  once  for  all,  the  inevitable  anthropo- 
centrism  of  all  our  knowledge,  there  might  come  to  be 


a  kind  of  religious  importance  and  use  in  our  thought 
of  an  unthinking  (not  an  unthinkable !)  Beyond,  and 
in  the  conception  of  a  universe  to  which  our  human 
likings  and  dislikings  could  not  be  applied. 

In  such  a  conception  of  an  existence  infinitely 
transcending  our  own,  of  which  our  Right  and  Wrong, 
our  Why  and  Wherefore,  are  but  minutest  facets,  in 
such  a  recognition  of  what  contains  and  surpasses  our- 
selves, it  seems  to  me  that  we  might  profitably  purify 
away  the  cloggings  of  our  little  human  mechanism. 

And  in  the  thought  of  that  for  which  our  very  ques- 
tions cease  to  have  any  meaning,  of  existence  apart 
from  our  wishes  and  sanctions,  we  might  gain  strength 
for  our  own  living  and  thinking,  even  as  the  inhabitant 
of  busy  cities  may  seek  refreshment  in  the  scarce 
breathable  air  of  barren  mountain-tops,  by  whose 
snows  and  suns  he  is  frozen  and  half-blinded,  and  by 
whose  outlooks  he  is  made  dizzy. 


Finis 


INDEX 


Absolute,  the,  i.  83,  84,  85.  86,  87 
*'  Anoeaheiic  Revelation  and  ike  Gist 

of  Philosophy"'!.  117 
''ATicator  Worship,"  I  31 
Apollo,  i.  246,  247 
*' Apologia,"  \.  2b% 
*' Apelogie   pour    notre  PassS,"  ii. 

102  note  1 
Art.  i.  152,  153,  154 
Augustine,  Saint,  i.  257  ;  ii.  60 
"Axioms  as  Postulates  —  Personal 

Idealism"  i.  22,  23,  27,  47  note  1 


B 


Bain,  James,  i.  15,  36,  38,  39,  42 

Baldwin,  Professor,  i.  18  note  1 

Bateson,  ii.  53 

Baudelaise,  Charles,  ii  206 

"  Beauty  and  Ugliness,"  i.  108  note  1 

Benn,  A.  W.,  ii.  20,  187 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  i.  42 

Bergson,  Monsieur,  i.  54,  69,  165, 

172,  200 ;  ii.  60,  61,  82,  83,  163, 

166,  171,  175 
Berkeley,  George,  i.  13,  14,  15,  18 

note  1,  19,  34,  38,  39 
Blavatsky,  H.  P.,  i.  107 
Boileau,  Nicolas,  ii.  126 

BOLSBNA,  MiRACLB  OP,  i.  230 

Boni,  Signer,  i.  62 

*•  Bough,  Oolden,"  il  5 

Bridgewater  Treaiises,  ii.  59 

Bright,  John,  i.  42 

Brown,  Thomas,  i.  38 

Browning,  Robert,  i.  182 ;  ii.  126, 

171 
Brummel,  Beau,  ii.  150 
Bruno,  i.  90 
Buckle,  Henry  Thoma»,  ii.  78 


Buddha,  i.  244 

"Bull  Roarer."  ii.  7,  12, 13, 14.  15. 
16,  26,  28,  50,  55,  58 


Calderoni,  Mario,  i.  5,  6 
Cambridge,  Massachusbtts,  i.  18 

note  1 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  ii.  153 
Catherine,  Saint,  of  Siena,  i.  58 
"Causation,"  i.  13,  14 
Cena,  Giovanni,  ii.  102 
"  Century  Dictionary,"  i.  18  note  1 
"  Christianity  at  the.  Cross  Roads." 

i.  160.  228  note  1,  259  ;  ii.  4 
"  Church  Times,"  Thoughtful  Writa- 

in,  ii.  25,  26,  27,  28,'  46 
Clifford,  W.  K.,i.  42,43 
Cobden,  Richard,  i.  42 
Colenso,  John  William,  ii.  55 
"  Conquest  of  Bread ,"  it  69 
Corneille,  Pierre,  ii.  99,  100 
Crawley,  Ernest,  i.   99,  149,  156, 
195 ;  ii.  2,  4,  5,  6,  8,  9,  10,  11, 
12, 13,  14,  15,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21, 
22,  23,  24,  25,  26,  27,  28,  31,  34, 
35,  36,  37,  38,  89,  40,  41.  42,  48, 
46,  48,  49,  50.  51,  52,  53,  54,  65, 
56,  57,  58.  85,  104, 121,  139,  145, 
147,  152,  192 


Dante,  i.  181,  182,  213 ;  ii.  16,  26, 

132, 160 
Death,  i.  211,  212,  219 
Demeter,  or  Isis,  or  Christ,  i.  267 
"  Dialogues  Philosophiqiies,"  ii.  64 
"Dictionary    of   Psychology    and 

Philosophy,"  i.  18  note  1 
Dostoiefsky,  F.  M.,  ii.  200 

218 


■  &,ilwii..JI 


Index 


215 


£ 

Eaton,  ii,  20 

EoYPT,  Sacrbd  Onions  of,  ii.  15 

'*  Elemental  P<yi7Ut  of  Vieio,"  ii.  86 

Ellenborough,  Lord,  ii.  20 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  ii.  153 

Endob,  THi  Witch  of,  ii.  15 

'* England,  Modem,"  ii.  20 

"  English  RationcUism  in  Nindetntk 

Century^'  ii,  20 
Erasmo,  Don,  i  259,  260 
"Eternal  Valuet"  u.  32 
''Evolution  CrkUnce,"  i.  200.  260: 

ii.  82  ' 

P 

*'Fonctions  Mentales  dans  les  Societis 
In/h-ieures,"  i.  215  note  1,  219 ; 
ii.  9  ' 

''Former  p'iloaiquei  de  I' Intelli- 
gence" ii.  192 

Fouilltfe,  Monsieur,  i.  146 ;  ii.  137 

France,  Anatole,  ii.  14 

Francesca,  Pier  della,  i.  248 

Francis,  Saint,  i.  247 

Frazer,  Alexander,  i.  195 ;  ii.  5, 
55 

Freud,  Siegmund,  i  123 

Frmts  for  Life,  i.  145,  148, 153, 155, 
228 

G 

Galileo,  i.  65 

Garibaldi,  Joseph,  i.  181 

Gillen,  ii.  58 

Gioberti,  Vincenzo,  i.  181 

Giotto  di  Bondone,  i.  183 

Gobineau,  ii.  89,  144 

Goethe,  Johann  von,  i.  237,  250 :  ii. 

90,173 
Guy-Grand,  G.,  ii,  82  note  1 


H 


Hal^ry,  David,  ii.  102,  153 
Hapgood,  ii.  66  note  1,  69  note  1 
Heam,  Lafcadio,  i.  30 
Hihhert  Journal,  i.  7,  18 
"Historic  Materialism;'  ii.  75 


Holyoake,  G.  J.,  ii,  20 

Horace,  i.  181 

"How  to  Make  our  Ideas  Clear,"  I 

12,14,  17,  21,  25  no<<;  1,  37.  46. 

126 ;  ii.  187 
"  Human  Identity/;'  i.  14,  19 
"Human  Immoitality ," i.  35 note  2, 

44 

"  Humanism,"  ii.  79  note  1,  187 
Humanity,  Proletarian  Neic,  ii.  81 
Hume.  David,  i  13.  14, 16,  19,  34, 


Ibsen,  Henrik,  i,  11,  52. 100 :  ii.  160 

"  Idees  Forces,"  i.  146 

Ignatius,  Saint,  i,  183 

"Iliad,"  I.  131 

"  Illustration  of  the  Logic  of  Science," 

i.  21  note  1,  22,  30,  46,  47 
''Instans  Tyrannua,"  il  126,  128 
Intuition,  i.  201 


James,  William,  i.  3,  4, 5,  8, 9  note  1, 
12,  14,  15,  17.  18  note  1.  19,  22 
23,  24,  25,  27,  28,  29,  31,  32,  34. 
36,  38,  39,  41,  42,  43,  44,  45,  46, 
47.  48,  50,  51,  53.  55.  56,  57,  59 
60,  64,  65,  66,  67.  m,  69.  71.  73 
74,  75,  76.  77,  78,  79,  80.  82,  83 
84,  85,  88,  90,  91,  92.  93,  94,  95. 
96,  97,  98,  99,  100.  101, 102,  108, 
105,  106,  108,  109,  110.  112  113 
114,  115, 116,  117,  119,  120,  121, 
122,  123,  124,  125.  126,  127  128 
129,  130,  181,  132,  133,  135  136 
137,  139,  140,  141,  142,  143,  145 
148,  152,  154,  155,  165,  228,  229 
237 ;  ii.  3,  61,  78,  79  m>te  1,  84, 
98,  110.  122,  129,  131,  152,  166! 
171,  175 

Janet,  P.,i.  V2!5  notel 

Jaur^s,  ii.  93 

''Jean  Christophe,"  il  102  note  1 

John,  Saint,  i.  185 

Johnson,  Samuel,  i.  62,  63 

Joshua,  i.  65 

JOUARRE,  Abbess  of,  ii.  147 

Jouarre,  Abbey  of,  i.  219,  221,  222 


"  Journal  of  Philosophy,"  i.  6 
Judea,  i.  178 


Kant,  Immanuel,  1.  39 
Keats,  John,  i.  51,  220^  221 ;  u.  125 
Khayyam,  Omar,  ii.  173 
Kropotkin,  Peter,  ii.  69 


"La  Philosophie  Syndlcaliste,"  ii. 

82«o<cl 
"  La  Teoria  Sindacalista,"  u.  61,  tv 

note  2, 107  note  1 
"La  Foce,"  ii.  99 
Lee,  Vernon,  i.  108  note  1 
Leo  XIII.,  Pope,  i.  259 
Leuba,  Doctor,  i.  127      , 
L^vT-Bruhl,  Monsieur,  1.  215,  219, 

220,  223 ;  ii.  9,  155,  157 
"  Liberal  Protestantism,"  i.  169,  228 

Li^,  Vital,!.  11,  99.  it\}5^i'r;!i- 
85,  114,  119,  124,  127,  U7,  150, 
151,154,185,205  . 

"  Life,  EleToeiUal  Vmo  of,  u.  8, 12, 
15,  22,  35,  37.  51,  52.  53,  55,  56, 

"Life,  Tree  of,"  ii.  2.  4.  5,  11,  17, 
ig.  i9.  46,  47.  54,  55.  56,  57,  58 

LoANGO,  sorcerers  of,  i  219,  220, 

221 
LOANGO  wizards,  i.  219,  221,  222 
Locke,  John,  i-  13,  14,  15,  19,  34, 

36,  38,  39 
Loisy,  Monsieur,  i.  171|  183,  185 
Lombroso,  i.  92 
Lona,%ii.  75 
Loyola,  Ignatius  de,  1.  94 


M 


Maiiano,  i.  5 

Man,  Primitive,  ii.  9,  10. 11,  13, 15 
Marx,  Karl,  ii.  75,  86 
"Matter,"'!.  13,  14 
Mazzini,  Giuseppe,  i,  181 
Mendel,  Abbot,  i.  61 
Meredith,  George,  ii.  169 
Messina,  i.  213 


Michelangelo,  i.  183 
Michelet,  Jules,  ii.  78 

Milan,  i.  260        .,.,,,  oa  qq 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  1.  15,  34,  36,  dV, 

42,  69,  70.  81 ;  ii.  150 
Milton,  John,  u.  191 
''Mind,"  I  6 
Morris,  William,  ii.  69 
Moses,  i.  98.  233  ;  ii.  30     .. 
Mountain,  Old  Men  of  the,  il  7» 
Mozart,  Wolfgang,  ii.  171,  179 
Miinsterberg,  Hugo,  ii.  31  note  1 
Myth,  Messianic,  ii.  80 
Ah,  Syndicalist,  i.  243 ;  u.  65,  75, 

§2,  8^,  89,  90,  92.  94,  95,  96 


N 


Napoleon,  ii.  99 
Nebuchadnezzar,  ii.  15 
Nero,  ii.  72  .  .. 

Newman,  John  Henry,  1.  259 ;  u. 

59 
"  News  from  Nowhere,"  ii.  69 
Nietzsche,  i.  10,  11,  235  ;  ii  61,  89, 

106,  109,  153,  205,  206 
"  Notre  Jeunesse,"  ii.  102  note  1 


Papini,  Signer,  i.  76 
Papirie,  Professor,  i.  18  note  1 

Paris,  ii.  179  „,    ,n,     •• 

Pascal,  Blaise,  i.  41,  134,  191 ;  u. 

130 
Passion,  i.  136 
Paul,  Saint,  i.  185,  233 
P^uy,  ii.  102  .   e   ^  - 

Peirce,  Charles  Sanders,  1.  5,  6,  /, 
8,  12,  14,  15,  17,  18  note  1,  19, 
21  Tiote  1,  22,  25  note  1,  28,  29, 
30,  31,  34,  36,  37,  38,  39,  41,  46, 
47!  49,  56,  60,  110,  126 ;  h.  187 
Pheidias,  ii.  144 
Pilate,  L  50 
Pilate,  Pontius,  ii.  52 
Pius  IX.,  Pope,  L  259 
Pius  X.,  Pope.  i.  148,  168  260 
Plato,i.  52,  l60;ii.  78,  144,184 
Pluralistic  Universe,  i.  86,  87 
"Political  Economy,"!.  81 


2l6 


Vital  Lies 


Index 


217 


11 


Poloniui,  L  77 

Pope,    Alexander,    ii.     183,    196, 

Popular  Science  Monthly,  i.  18  nott 

1,  21  note  1 
Pi-actical  Difference,  i.  16,  19 
''Pragmatic  Principle,"  i.  15,  16, 

17,  18,  19 
"  Prafftnatitm,"  i.  23,  24,  25.  27,  35 

no<e  1,  40.  42,  47,  50,  55  noU  1, 

60,  66,  68,  69,  78,  79,  82,  86,  88, 

137,  142,  143,  145,  157 ;  ii.  3,  79 

note  1 
"  Pragmatism  and  Psexido-Pragma- 

titm"  i,  86  note  1 
PrezzoJini.  ii.   61,  65,  72,  73,   74, 

79  nott  2,  80,  86,  107  note  1 
*' Principles     of    Psychology,"     i 

Protagoras,  i,  45 
"P»ychology:'i.lb 


••  Reason,  Age  of,"  iL  20 

'•  RejUxions  nir  la  Violence,"  ii  65 

nott  1.  70,  76,  77,  88.  92,  97,  113, 

122 
"  Religion.  Psychology  of,"  ii.  13 
Religious  Idea,  i.  172, 176,  190, 191, 

192.  193,  194.  195,  205,  206,  217, 

224,  225,  228  ;  ii.  84 
Renan,  Ernest,  ii.  64,  70,  71,  77. 

99.  100, 101,  106,  107.  108,  109, 

110,  111,  137.  147.  161,  192 
"Review,  North  American,"  i.  3 
••  Revue  du  Mois,"  i.  6 
**  ReviLe  Pkilosophique,"  i.  18  note  1 ; 

ii.  125,  170  note  1 
Ribot,  ii  170  note  1 
Roget.  Peter  Mark,  i  11,  118 
RoUand,  ii.  102  note  1 
ROMB,  i  88,  178 
"i2o*e.  Mystic,"  i\.  2,  6.  9,  23,  42, 

65 
Rousseau.  Jean  Jacques,  ii.  140 


S 

SalMby,  ii.  63 
Sandow,  Eugen,  ii  40 


Schiller,  F.  C,  i.  5,  7,  8,  19,  22, 
23,  26,  27.  28,  29,  30,  31,  32,  34. 
35,  36,  38,  41,  44,  45,  46,  47.  48, 
49.  62,  65.  99.  136.  166,  235 :  ii 
61,  78,  79  note  1,  187 

Schopenhauer.  Arthur,  ii.  163 

"  Scritti  di  Giovanni  Vailati"  i,  5 

Servetus,  ii.  20 

Socrates,  i.  53.  233  ;  ii  137,  138 

Sorel,  Georges,  i.  62,  99,  148,  156, 
243  ;  ii  61,  62,  64.  65,  70.  71,  75. 
76.  77,  79,  80,  81,  82,  83,  84.  85, 
86.  87,  88,  89,  90,  91,  92,  93,  94, 
95,  96,  97,  98,  99,  100,  102,  103, 
104,  106.  107,  111,  112,  113.  116, 
122.  145,  147.  162.  192 

Spencer,  Herbert,  i.  42,  187,  199, 
201 ;  ii.  68 

"  Spirit  of  Labour"  ii.  66  note  1,  69 
note  1 

Starbuck,  ii.  13  note  I,  18  note  1 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  i.  154 

Stendhal  (Beyle,  Marie-Henri),  ii 
140 

Stewart,  Dugald,  i.  38 

Strauss,  David,  ii.  55,  113 

Strike,  General,  i.  148,  149 ;  ii.  62. 
71,  72,  73,  80,  81,  113 

"  Studies  fin  Humanism,"  i  22.  23, 
26,  44,  45,  136  note  1 

Suffering,  i.  211,  212,  213,  219 

Sjrmonds.  J.  A.,  i.  117 

-Sec  Myth 


Teresa,  Saint,  i.  94 

"  Terrible  Doubt  of  Appearances," 

i  208,  209.  210,  218 
"  Thesaui-us  of  English  Wm-ds  and 

Phrases,"  i.  118,  120 
Thomas  Aquinas,  ii.  60 
Thomson,  C.  A.,  i.  108  note  1         ^ 
Tiberius,  i.  169 
tolstoi,  Leo,  i   233 ;  ii.   106,  114, 

116,  126,  137,  188,  163,  205 
Trajan,  Emperor,  ii.  30 
Tripoli,  ii  183 
*' Trut^n-so'far-forth,"    i.    82,   83, 

86,  86,  87,  110,  234 
Tylor,  ii.  66 


Tyrrell,  George 
164,  165,  166, 
171,  172, 173, 
178,  179, 183, 
188,  189,  190, 
204,  205,  206, 
223,  224,  225, 
231,  233,  234, 
240.  241,  242, 
ii.  3,  4,  84,  85 


,  i.  148,  162,  163, 
167,  168,  169, 170, 
174, 175.  176,  177, 
184,  185, 186.  187, 
192,  194,  195,  196. 
214,  217,  218,  219, 
226.  227,  228,  230, 
235.  236,  237,  239, 
253,  256,  259,  261 ; 
.  121,  152 


U 


Universe,  Pluralistic,  ii.  171,  173 


Vailati,  Giovanni,  i.  5,  6 

Val  di  Greve,  i.  245 

Value  of  Symbolism,  i.VJ^ 

Varieties  of  Religious  Belief,  i.  210^ 

• '  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience, " 
i.  13,  38,  43,  60  note  1,  79,  80,  87, 
91,  100,  110,  116,  119,  137.  139, 
142,  229  ;  ii  79  note  1,  159 

Venn,  Henry,  ii.  152 

Verification  Process,  i.  56,  57,  58, 
69,  60,  64 


Versaillbs,  ii.  179 
Vienna,  ii.  179 
Virgil,  i.  181,  182 ;  ii.  6 
"  Voice  of  the  Silence, "  i.  107 
Voltaire,  Fran9ois,  ii.  14,  60,  78, 
100, 150,  184 

W 

Woissmann,  August,  i.  190,  211 

Whitman,  Walt,  i.  208,  210,  218 ; 
ii.  192,  204 

"  Will-to-Believe"  i.  3,  4,  5,  9,  11, 
12.  15.  16.  22,  28,  32,  33.  37,  41, 
42.  43,  47,  61,  117. 164,  227,  228, 
243,  261,  253 ;  ii.  3,  7,  8,  16.  79 
7iote  I,  98  note  1,  112,  129,  184 

Witch  Trials,  i.  97 


Young,  Edward,  ii  192 


Zeus,  i  244 
Zola,  Emile,  ii.  69 


%.:■        ;.      I 


>if 


i 


*i 


Br  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE  ENCHANTED  WOODS 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS  ON  THE 
GENIUS  OF  PLACE 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

Croiun  Svo,     3/.  6d,  net 

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powerful  and  delicate." 

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subjects,  and  to  her  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  see 
all  woods  through  a  veil  of  enchantment." 


\  r^~ 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

HORTUS    VITAE 

ESSAYS  ON  THE  GARDENING  OF  LIFE 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

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suggestive  things  to  say.  .  .  .  Whenever  and  wherever  she 
speaks  of  Italy,  the  sun  shines  in  this  garden  of  hers,  the 
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other  indispensable  requisite  of  the  true  essayist.  Also  her 
philosophy  is  never  aggressively  didactic,  but  always 
refreshing  and  helpful." 

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to  say  on  the  conduct  and  management  of  life,  as  well  as  on 
the  culture  of  the  aesthetic  and  other  senses." 

The  Spectator. — "  The  grace  of  diction  that  marks  one  who 
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thought  that  sometimes  recalls  Mrs  Meynell  and  sometimes 
R.  L.  Stevenson,  and  even  here  and  there  reminds  one  of 
Emerson.  ...  No  book  quite  so  good  of  its  kind  has  lately 
been  published."  ' 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  ROME 

LEAVES  FROM  A  DIARY 

BY 

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but  we  know  no  work  of  hers  (nor,  for  that  matter,  of  any 
one's)  to  compare  for  beauty  with  many  of  the  exquisite 
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described." 

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pages  there  is  what  the  author  intended  to  capture — the  very 
breath  of  Rome." 

Daily  Telegraph. — "  A  new  volume  of  essays  from  the  pen 
of  Vernon  Lee  is  sure  of  a  welcome  from  all  readers  who 
appreciate  literary  artistry.  .  .  .  The  author  is  well 
equipped  for  the  difficult  task  which  she  has  essayed— that 
of  representing  the  '  spirit '  of  the  most  fascinating  of  cities 
by  means  of  the  printed  word  :  she  is  gifted  with  the  power 
of  seeing  the  essential  items  in  a  scene." 

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wonderfully  vivid  impression  of  Rome.  .  .  .  That  would  be 
a  prosaic  soul  which  did  not  gather  a  sense  of  poetry  from 
it." 

Evening  Standard.— *'. The  quick,  fresh,  and  impulsive 
qualities  of  the  book  make  it  singularly  fascinating  to 
read." 


\' 


i 


BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE  SENTIMENTAL 
TRAVELLER 

NOTES  ON  PLACES 

BY 

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Vernon  Lee  has  written  many  delightful  things,  but  nothing, 
perhaps,  more  keenly  suggestive  and  charmingly  convincing 
than  the  first  chapter  of  her  new  book." 

Daily  Telegraph — «« Vemon  Lee  is  a  writer  whose  gift  of 
style  is  such  as  to  render  her  musings  and  descriptions  in 
essay  form  always  attractive  to  the  reader  with  what  may 
be  termed  a  literary  palate." 

DaUy  Graphic— *^Tht  book  is  not  for  the  multitude,  but 
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Globe.— *^\t  is  always  a  pleasure  to  meet  with  Vernon 
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sociable  book."  ' 

ScotsmaH.—*' In  briUiant  light  and  shade,  in  elusire  and 
wayward  grace,  in  flamboyant  fancy,  and  in  other  rare 
literary  qualities  her  handiwork  may  lay  claim  in  the  line  of 
succession  to  that  of  Sterne." 

Nezv  Age — «'  'The  Sentimental  Traveller'  is  full  of  such 
delightful  pictures  in  which  the  spirit  of  place  seems  sud- 
denly  to  flash  before  the  reader's  mind.  Individually  each 
separate  essay  has  its  own  charm." 

MorniHg  Pott — "  A  beautiful  book  ;  an  oasis  of  leisure  and 
beauty  amidst  the  noisy  literature  of  the  day." 


BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

LAURUS   NOBILIS 

CHAPTERS  ON  ART  AND  LIFE 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

Croivn  Svo,     $s.  6d.  net 

Spectator.--'' It  is  long  indeed  since  we  have  met  with  a 
volume  of  art  criticism  so  wise,  so  attractive,  so  suggestive 
as  «  Laurus  Nobilis.'  .  .  .  Interspersed  with  those  exquisite 
pieces  of  imaginative  description  in  which  few  living  writers 

can  surpass  Vernon  Lee The  book  is  indeed  too  full 

of  charm,  originality,  and  wisdom  to  be  quickly  read  or 
dealt  with  in  a  few  lines.     It  should  be  bought  and  studied. 

fVestminster  Gazette.-'' Vevuon  Lee  has  developed  a 
cultured,  delicate  style  in  her  literary  art  that  forms  a 
beautiful  medium  for  the  translation  of  her  many-sided  and 
keenly  apprehensive  mind,  and  any  book  of  hers  is  worthy 
not  only  to  be  read  but  to  be  considered  and  carefully 
pondered." 

Morning  Post.— "Her  landscape  is  full  of  delight,  and  for 
those  who  are  curious  in  method  hers  is  worth  studying^ 
There  is  a  real  love  of  beauty,  an  intellectual  curiosity  and 
honesty  which  ought  to  prove  profitably  disturbing  to  the 
average  lover  of  art." 

Daily  Express.-"  A  new  book  by  Vernon  Lee  carries  with 
it  the  assurance  of  fine  literature." 

Daily  Mail.—"  Nothing  could  be  more  dainty  than  Vernon 
Lee's  style,  nothing  more  refined  than  her  intellect." 

Observer.-".  .  .  I  so  greatly  enjoyed  this  delightful 
volume  because  the  writer  has  herself  so  beautiful  and  in- 
spiring a  mind,  because  her  lyre  is  so  ^ull  of  melody  and 
music,  and  the  charm  of  her  language  is  so  rare ;  and  to 
commune  with  it  is  like  inhaling  the  scent  of  the  early 
morning  woods  and  listening  to  the  shepherd  in  Arcady. 


BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

LIMBO  &  OTHER  ESSAYS 

TO  WHICH   IS  ADDED 

ARIADNE  IN  MANTUA 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

Crown  8vo.     3J.  6d,  net 

Spectator. — "It  18  really  hard  to  fix  on  the  best  essays  in  a 
volume  full  of  fascination.  *  Ravenna  and  her  Ghosts,'  as 
much  as  any,  shows  the  writer's  artistic  power.  'About 
Leisure  '  is  a  dose  of  restful  enjoyment  for  a  tired  brain." 

Outliok, — "A  volume  of  essays  which  shows  Vernon  Lee 
to  be  a  master  of  this  lighter  form  of  literature.  It  is  full  of 
humour  and  truth." 

Ntiu  Age. — "What  a  relief  to  the  mind  it  is  to  recover 
that  intense  sunlight  in  which  these  essays  are  steeped,  with 
the  more  than  hint  of  luxurious  ease  conveyed  in  the  very 
cadence  of  the  sentences.  All  lovers  of  pure  literature  are 
greatly  indebted  to  Vernon  Lee  for  many  happy  hours. 
They  will  be  further  indebted  by  the  inclusion  of  her  beauti- 
ful play  'Ariadne  in  Mantua.'" 

Maurick  Baring  in  Morning  Patt. — "It  is  impossible  to 
give  in  a  brief  space  any  idea  of  the  beauty  and  richness  of 
this  drama,  for  in  giving  a  mere  skeleton  of  the  plot  all  that 
is  important  is  omitted  ;  since  the  beauty  and  power  of  the 
play  depend  entirely  on  subtle  gradations  of  thought  and 
feeling  answering  to  and  playing  upon  each  other,  built  up 
note  by  note.  Quotations  from  this  play  are  like  bars  of 
music  torn  from  a  beautiful  song,  or  squares  of  canvas  cut 
out  from  a  noble  picture.  To  touch  this  play  is  to  mutilate 
it ;  to  appreciate  it  one  must  read  it  all,  or,  better  still,  should 
some  intelligent  manager  prove  enterprising  and  give  us  the 
opportunity,  see  it  acted  on  the  stage." 

Observer — "  It  is  a  little  chef  (feeuvre  both  in  language  and 
fancy.  .  .  .  There  can  be  no  question  that  this  is  an  ex- 
quisite little  literary  fantasy,  rich  with  thought  and  poetry 
and  the  meanings  of  life.     It  is  written  in  very  fine  English." 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

ALTHEA 

DIALOGUES  ON  ASPIRATIONS 
AND  DUTIES 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

Crown  8vo.     3x.  6d.  net 

Nation, — *« .  .  .  We  are  grateful  to  this  coterie  for  reveal- 
ing the  opinions  of  the  serene  and  significant  intelligence 
who  signs  herself  Vernon  Lee." 

Saturday  Review. — "There  is  an  honesty  of  thought  and 
purpose  in  these  papers  and  a  gift  of  expression  which  make 
them  stimulating  and  delightful." 

Literary  Post. — "Vernon  Lee  has  a  charming  gift  of  de- 
scription, coupled  with  a  strong  love  and  sense  of  colour." 

Illustrated  London  Nezvs. — " .  .  .  Is  it  necessary  to  add  that 
the  writing  is  a  joy  in  itself?  " 

Aberdeen  Free  Press. — "The  result  is  a  long  series  of 
delightful  books.  ...  All  written  in  a  delightfully  allusive, 
almost  capricious  manner.  She  has  a  keen  eye  to  the 
esthetic,  and  in  some  places  the  way  in  which  she  weaves 
into  her  dialogues  allusions  to  the  beauties  of  the  earth  is 
almost  startling  in  its  exquisite  suggestiveness.  So  long  as 
she  continues  to  charm  us  with  these  glowing  splashes  of 
beautiful  thought  we  shall  never  have  to  sigh  for  the  death 
of  the  essayist." 

Scotsman. — "  Full  of  an  interest  which  rests  both  on  the 
matter  and  the  manner  of  them." 

Irish  Independent — "There  is  no  gainsaying  the  fact  of 
Vernon  Lee's  singular  literary  charm.  .  .  .  Those  who  have 
read  others  of  her  delightful  volumes  will  not  hesitate  in 
renewing  her  acquaintance." 


f 


Br  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

VANITAS 

POLITE  STORIES,  INCLUDING 
"A  FRIVOLOUS  CONVERSATION" 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

Crown  Svo.     3/.  6d.  net 

Athenaum. — "  Vemon  Lee,  in  reprinting  with  Mr  John 
Lane  the  three  •  Polite  Stories '  which  make  up  the  greater  part 
of  '  Vanitas,'  has  added  a  fourth  tale  not  hitherto  published. 
She  has  done  well.  The  motive  of  this  story  ...  is  de- 
veloped with  a  freshness  and  individuality  which  lend  all 
the  charm  of  novelty  to  Vernon  Lee's  narrative.  Her  picture 
of  the  young  Austrian  noble  ...  is  singularly  life-like 
and  pathetic.  Madame  Nitzenko  is  a  noble  figure,  and  her 
relations  with  KoUonitz  .  .  .  are  beautifully  described." 

Dailt/  Mail. — '*  Vernon  Lee's  gift  of  delicate  and  expressive 
prose  is  well  known,  and  has  won  for  its  owner  a  secure 
place  in  the  world  of  letters.  .  .  .  The  stories  are  quite 
up  to  the  high  standard  of  their  author's  previous 
achievement." 

Outlook. — "It  is  a  finished  and  moving  piece  of  art  from 
beginning  to  end." 

tVorld. — «'  Polite  Stories  the  author  calls  these  tales,  and 
the  description  is  apt.  They  are  leisured,  well-bred,  finely- 
gowned  things." 

Globe. — "These  tales  are  cleverly  written  in  a  bright, 
literary  way  ;  the  situations  are  good  ;  the  points  raised  are 
delicate,  and  the  stories  are  neither  too  long  nor  too  short." 

Evening  Standard.  —  "There  is  distinction  in  every 
chapter." 

Scotsman. — "Clever  and  exquisitely  written  like  all  the 
work  of  this  talented  lady." 


))■! 


BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

BEAUTY  AND  UGLINESS 

AND  OTHER  STUDIES  IN 
PSYCHOLOGICAL  ^ESTHETICS 


BY 


VERNON  LEE 

AND 

C.  ANSTRUTHER-THOMSON 
12s.  6d.  net 

iVa//.^._«jThis  book  is  specially  to  be  welcomed  at  this 
stage  of  esthetic  science,  because  the  whole  of  it  is  securely 
based  on  genuine  and  unfailing  aesthetic  enjoyment." 

Manchester  G«^r^/^«._«  These  studies  contain  a  great  deal 
that  IS  invaluable  for  English  students  of  aesthetics.  .  . 
Professor  Lipps  theory  is  a  thing  of  great  significance,  and 
It  I.  here  ably  expounded  and  criticised,  and  to  it  the  authors 
add  much  incisive,  determined  reasoning  of  their  own,  some 
admirable  suggestions  (all  those  concerning  the  « esthetic 
imperative,  for  instance),  and  many  interesting  results  of 
experimental  introspection."  ^ 

..^''\^''1f^"'~*' '  ■.•  ^"^  *^"  thorough  comprehensive 
and  exhaustive  manner  have  the  authors  given  expression  to 
much  earnest  thought-the  fruit  of  honest  and  sincere  work 

prrfittXm^lte"''' -"^^'^^  ^"""^  "^^^  '^''^^  ^^^  -^^ 

Sundai,    Times.—^^.    .    .    These    stimulating    studies    in 
psychological  esthetics,   which  are  indeed  a  monument  of 
earning    observation,  and  analysis,  and  must  rank  as  an 
invaluable  contribution  to  a  difficult  subject." 

Scotsman.— '^  The  volume  will  be  read  with  hearty  interest 
by  aU  serious  students  of  the  philosophy  of  art." 

ranity  Fair — "Vernon   Lee  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the 
most  erudite  women  writers  of  the  day." 

.nfr  "^^Tu'^T ''  '^^  ^°°^  ^^'"^  ^"^  inaugurate  a  new 
epoch,  abolish  Tolstoy,  and  perhaps  will  lay  the  scientific 
basis  of  the  psychology  of  the  work  of  art  and  the  artist  " 


BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

HAUNTINGS 

FANTASTIC  TALES 

BY 

VERNON  LEE 

Crown  Svo.      JJ.  6d.  net.     Second  Edition 

Spectator.—"  Most  romantic  and  delightful  reading    .   .  . 

There  i>  enough  imagination  in  these  short  stories  to  furnish 

any  number  of  present-day  novels,  and  people  with  strong 

nerve»  who  enjoy  thrills  can  be  unhesitatingly  recommended 

to  read  the  book." 

Westminster  Gaz^W^.—"  Imagination  and  fantasy  are  equal  y 
dominant    in    the    four    stories    of   Vernon    Lees    book, 

«  Hauntings.'"  .         _ 

Saturday  i?«;/Vw.—«  Seldom  hare  any  stories  of  pure 
fantasy  contained  more  genuine  and  excellent  qualities  than 
the  four  ghost  stories  of  Vernon  Lee  .  .  .  passages  of  real 
beauty,  sensitive  and  glowing  descriptions  of  some  Italian 
scene,  breathing  the  very  spirit  and  essence  of  what  she 
describes.  Her  stories  are  truly  mysterious,  and  grip  the 
imagination  in  their  suggestion  of  the  picturesque  and  the 
terrible.  But,  above  all,  they  are  picturesque,  drawn  with 
delicate  and  brilliant  touches,  and  rich  in  colour  and  design. 

POPE  JACYNTH 

AND  OTHER  FANTASTIC  TALES 
Crown  Svo.     3 J.  ^d.  net 

GENIUS    LOCI 

NOTES  ON  PLACES 
Crown  8«yo.     3^.  6^.  net 

RENAISSANCE 

FANCIES  AND  STUDIES 
Crown  %vo.     3J.  dd.  net 

THE 

COUNTESS  OF  ALBANY 

With  three  Illustrations.     Crown  Svo.     3J.  6d.  net 


BOOKS  ABOUT 

ITALY 


BY 

VERNON   LEE 

LEO.   G.   SERA 

G.     A.     GREEN 

G.    P.    CLERICI 

J.  M.  KENNEDY 

Dr.  OSCAR  LEVY 

EDWARD  HUTTON 

EDITH    WHARTON 

FREDERIC   CHAPMAN 

MAXFIELD     PARRISH 

A.  MARY  F.  ROBINSON 

VALENTINA  HAWTREY 

SIR  FRANCIS  VANE,  RT- 

ELIZABETH  BROWNING 

DENNISTOUN  OF  DENNISTOUN 

CONSTANCE  JOCELYN  FFOULKES 

AUTHOR  OF  "  IN  A  TUSCAN  GARDEN  " 

MONSIGNOR  RODOLFO  MAIOCCHI,  D.D. 


PUBLISHED  BY  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD, 
VIGO  STREET,  LONDON,  W. 


CASA    GUIDI    WINDOWS 

BY     ELIZABETH     BARRETT     BROWNING 
With  an   Introduction  by  A.  Mary  F.  Robinson  (Mme. 
DucLAUX),  and  a  Photogravure  Frontispiece.    Fcap.  8vo. 
as.  net. 

The  Athnueum.-''  Elegant,  graceful  and  also  discerning.  Modern 
versifiers  can  boast  of  more  than  Mrs.  Browning,  but  a  tithe  ot  her 
poet's  soul,  her  rare  enthusiasm,  would  count  lor  a  good  deal  more 
than  their  admirable  correctness  and  fastidious  transfigurations  " 

naili/yeu>$—"  The  delightful  new  edition  which  Mr.  John  Lane 
has  just  issued  ought  ceitainly  to  serve  for  the  serious  criticism  and 
admiration  to  which  a  great  poet  is  entitled." 

THE    LIFE    OF 
SAINT    MARY    MAGDALEN 

Translated  from  the  Italian  of  an  unknown  fourteenth 
century  writer  by  Valentina  Hawtrey.  With  an 
Introductory  Note  by  Vernon  Lee.  Illustrated  by 
Fourteen  Full  Page  Reproductions  from  Old  Masters. 
Crown  8vo.     Gilt.     Price  5s.  net. 

PaUMcM  Gazette.-'' Adminhly  rendered  from  the  Italian  by 
Miss  Hawtrey.  The  story,  with  its  devout  purpose,  and  religious 
atmosphere,  is  a  striking  contrast  to  the  'religious  novels ' of  to-dav 
that  strive  to  make  effective  the  Gospel  narrative." 

Bookman.— A  singularly  beautiful  translation  of  one  of  the  best 
ot  the  remarkable  Italian  devotional  romances  of  the  Middle  Ages 
it  IS  well  translated  by  Miss  Hawtrey,  with  a  series  of  well  executed 
reproductions. 

Daily  yews.— "It  is  almost  cruel  to  mention  in  the  same  breath 
such  modem  popular  efforts  as  '  Barabbas  '  and  to  note  how  utterly 
they  stand  condemned  before  the  pure  and  quaint  charm  which 
comes  from  the  perfect  childlike  devotion  of  this  old  chronicler." 

WALKS   AND 
PEOPLE    IN    TUSCANY 

By  Sir  Francis  Vane.  Bt,  With  numerous  Illustrations 
by  Stephen  Haweis  and  S.  Garstin  Harvey.  Crown 
8vo.     5s.  net. 

This  book  treats  of  many  walks  and  cycle  rides,  practically 
describing,  if  not  covering,  the  whole  of  Tuscany,  It  has  been 
written  with  the  especial  object  of  setting  before  the  reader  not  only 
the  characteristics  of  the  landscape  but  no  less  the  inhabitants  of 
all  classes,  whom  the  author  encountered.  Not  only,  however  does 
he  depcnbe  the  people  and  the  scenery,  but  he  has  placed  on  record 
his  thoughts  about  them  in  a  frank  and  bold  manner.  The  author 
also  has  a  considerable  acquaintance  with  history,  heraldy  and 
genealogy,  which  prove  useful  to  him  in  dealing  with  the  social 
system  of  Italy  in  the  past  and  of  to-day.  The  general  scheme  of 
the  work  is  to  take  the  two  centres.  Florence  the  capital,  and  the 
summer  resort  Bagi  de  Lucca,  and  the  author  has  made  his  expe- 
ditions from  these,  consequently  covering  with  an  effective  network 
ot  raida  the  mountains  and  valleys  between 


BOOKS    BY    VERNON    LEE 

HORTUS     VITAE 

ESSAYS   ON   THE  GARDENING  OF  LIFE 
Crown  Svo.       ^s.  6d.  net. 

Tititcs. — "  There  are  many  charming  flowers  in  it  .  .  .  the 
swift  to  and  fro  of  her  vivid,  capricious  mind  carries  the  reader 
hither  and  thither  at  her  will,  and  she  has  such  wise,  suggestive 
things  to  say.  .  .  .  Whenever  and  wherever  she  speaks  of  Italy, 
the  sun  shines  in  this  garden  of  hers,  the  south  wind  stirs  among 
the  roses." 

IVestminster  Gazette. — "  They  are  of  the  family  of  Lamb,  Hunt, 
and  Hazlitt,  just  as  those  derive  from  the  Augustans,  Addison, 
and  Steele.  .  .  .  Vernon  Lee  jxissesses  the  best  gifts  of  the  essayists 
the  engaging  turn,  the  graceful  touch,  the  subtle  allusiveness." 

The  spectator. — "The  grace  of  diction  that  marks  one  who  is 
at  once  a  mondainc  and  a  cosmopolitan,  and  a  grace  of  thought 
that  sometimes  recalls  Mrs.  Meynell  and  sometimes  R.  L. 
Stevenson,  and  even  here  and  there  reminds  one  of  Emerson. 
...  No  book  quite  so  good  of  its  kind  has  lately  been  published." 


THE    ENCHANTED    WOODS 

AND    OTHER    ESSAYS    ON   THE 
GENIUS    OF    PLACE 

Crown  %vo.       ^t^.  6d.  net. 

Outlook. — "  The  book  is  one  to  be  enjoyed  for  its  sheer  beauty 
of  style  by  those  who  have  never  visited  the  places  described  ; 
but  those  who  have  will  enjoy  the  amazing  aptness  of 
epithet  .  .  .  ;  in  her  extraordinary  sensitiveness  to  modes  of 
time  and  place,  Vernon  Lee's  attitude  recalls  that  of  Mr.  Henry 
James." 

Guardian. — "Vernon  Lee's  peculiar  gift  is  to  be  seen  at  its 
best  in  her  latest  book,  '  The  Enchanted  Woods.'  .  .  .  She  repre- 
sents her  feelings  in  broad,  bright  touches,  at  once  powerful  and 
delicate." 

Daily  News. — "  These  vivid  pictures  of  the  beauty  of  places." 

Pall  Mall  Gazettec. — "The  picturesque  and  facile  prose  which 
this  writer  has  made  well  known  for  many  distinctive  qualities." 


BOOKS    BY    VERNON    LEE 

THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROME 

LEAVES   FROM   A   DIARY 
Crown  Svo.       ss-  6d.  net. 

Daily  Mail.— "Vernon  Lee's  prose  poems.  ...  Her  impres- 
sions of  Rome  are  vividly  caught  and  delicately  described  " 

Daily  Telegraph.  "A  new  volume  of  essays  from  the  pen  of 
\  emon  Lee  is  sure  of  a  welcome  from  all  readers  who  appreciate 

!,rir''"l*l*''K^-u  ■  •  The  author  is  well  equipped  for  the  difficult 
task  which  she  has  essayed-that  of  representing  the  •  spirit '  of 
•  t^2^  fascinating  of  cities  by  means  of  the  printed  word  :  she 
is  gifted  with  the  power  of  seeing  the  essential  items  in  a  scene." 

HAUNTINGS 

FANTASTIC  TALES 
Crown  %vo,       3s.  6ci.  net.      Second  Edition. 

spectator.—"  Most  romantic  and  delightful  reading.  There 

is  enough  imagination  in  these  short  stories  to  furnish  anv 
number  of  present-day  novels,  and  people  with  strong  nerves  whb 
enjoy  thrills  can   be   unhesitatingly  recommended  to  read   the 

Saturday  Review.-"  Seldom  have  any  stories  of  pure  fantasv 
contained  more  genuine  and  excellent  qualities  that  the  four 
f  n^  «i  ""  °i  ^*'^°?"  ^^  •  •  passages  of  real  beauty,  sensitive 
e^olp^^aidtSn'^croTwtr^  '-^'^'^^  *^« 

THE 
SENTIMENTAL  TRAVELLER 

NOTES    ON    PLACES 

Crown  Svo.       $s.  6d.  net. 

spectator.-"  Full  of  human  as  well  as  of  artistic  interest. 

No  one  will  question   the  originality  and  charm.  .  .  .  Vernon 

Lee  has  written  many  delightful  things ;   but  nothing,  perhaps, 

cTapte'/^oJtrn^r.;::^^  ^^--gly-vincing  thin  Se  fiS 

Daily   Telegraph.     "Vernon    Lee   is   a  writer  whose  gift   of 

style  IS  such  as  to  render  her  musings  and  descriptions  in  essay 

lit^'^U  ^  .^^""^  ^°  ^^  '^"^^  "^^  what  may  be  termed  a 


BOOKS  BY  VERNON  LEE 

LIMBO  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

TO  WHICH  IS  ADDED  ARIADNE  IN 

MANTUA 

3s.  6d.  net.     Second  Edition. 

Maurice  Baring  in  the  Morning  Post.— "it  is  impossible  to 
give  in  a  brief  space  any  idea  of  the  richness  and  beauty  of  this 
drama,  for  in  giving  a  mere  skeleton  of  the  plot  all  that  is  important 
is  omitted  ;  since  the  beauty  and  power  of  the  play  depend  entirely 
on  subtle  graduations  of  thought  and  feeling  answering  to  and 
playing  upon  each  other,  built  up  note  by  note.  Quotations  from 
this  play  are  like  bars  of  music  torn  from  a  beautiful  song,  or 
squares  of  canvas  cut  out  from  a  noble  picture.  To  touch  this 
play  is  to  mutilate  it ;  to  appreciate  it  one  must  read  it  all,  or 
better  still,  should  some  intelligent  manager  prove  enterprising 
and  give  us  the  opportunit}',  see  it  acted  on  the  stage." 

GENIUS  LOCI 

Crown  Svo.     $s.  6d.  net. 

POPE  JAGYNTH 

Crown  Svo.     $s.  6d.  net. 


Second  Edition. 


Second  Edition. 


RENAISSANGE  FANGIES  AND 
STUDIES 

Crown  Svo.     3s.  6d.  net.     Second  Edition. 

THE  GOUNTESS  OF  ALBANY 

Crown  Svo.         With  Three  Illustrations. 
3s.  6d.  net.         Second  Edition. 

ALTHEA 

Crown  Svo.     3s.  6d.  net. 

VANITAS :    POLITE  STORIES 

Crown  Svo.     3s.  6d.  net.     Second  Edition. 

LAURUS  NOBILIS : 

CHAPTERS  ON  ART  AND  LIFE 
Crown  Svo.     3s.  6d.  net.     Second  Edition. 


/ 


VINCENZO  FOPPA  of  BRESCIA 

FOUNDER  OF  THE  LOMBARD  SCHOOL:  HIS 
LIFE  AND  WORK.  By  Constance  Jocelyn  Ffoulkes 
and  Monsigfnor  Rodolfo  Maiocchi,  D.D..  Rector  of 
The  Collegio  Borromeo,  Pavia.  Based  on  research  in 
the  Archives  of  Milan,  Pavia.  Brescia,  and  Genoa,  and 
on  the  study  of  all  his  known  works.  With  nearly  loo 
Illustrations,  15  in  Photogravure,  and  about  100  Docu- 
ments. Demy  4to.  Five  Guineas  net.  Limited  to  300 
copies  for  sale  in  England  and  America. 

No  complete  life  of  Vincenzo  Foppa,  one  t)f  the  greatest  of  the 
North  Italian  Masters,  has  ever  been  written.  He  was  regarded 
by  some  of  his  contemporaries  as  unrivalled  in  his  art,  and  his 
nght  to  be  considered  the  head  and  founder  of  the  Lombard 
School  js  undoubted.  His  influence  was  powerful  and  far- 
reachmg  ;  m  the  Milanese  district  it  was  practically  dominant  for 
over  a  quarter  of  a  century,  until  the  coming  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
The  authors  have  unearthed  a  large  amount  of  new  material 
relatmg  to  Foppa,  one  of  the  most  interesting  facts  brought  to 
light  bemg  that  he  lived  for  twenty-three  years  longer  than  was 
formerly  supposed.  The  illustrations  include  several  pictures  by 
Foppa  hitherto  unknown  in  the  history  of  art,  and  others  which 
have  never  before  been  published,  as  well  as  reproductions  of 
every  existmg  work  by  the  master  at  present  known. 


MEMOIRS  OF  THE  DUKES  OF 

URBINO 

Illustrating  the  Arms,  Art  and  Literature  of  Italy  from 
1440101630.  ByjAMES  Dennistoun  of  Dennistoun.  A 
New  Edition  edited  by  Edward  Hutton.  with  upwards 
of  100  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.,  3  vols.  Price  42s  net ; 
postage  IS.  extra. 

For  many  years  this  great  book  has  been  out  of  print,  although 
It  still  remains  the  chief  authority  upon  the  Duchy  of  Urbino  from 
the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  The  Court  of  Urbino  was 
perhaps  the  most  splendid  and  cultured  in  Italy,  and  Duke 
Fedengo  one  of  the  greatest  soldiers  of  his  time.  Mr.  Hutton 
has  carefully  edited  the  whole  work,  leaving  the  te.xt  substantially 
the  same,  but  adding  a  large  number  of  notes,  comments  and 
references.  Everj-  sort  of  work  has  been  laid  under  contribution 
to  illustrate  the  text  and  biographies  have  been  supplied  on  many 
subjects.  The  book  acquires  a  new  value  on  account  of  the  mass 
of  illustrations  which  it  now  contains,  thus  adding  a  pictorial 
comment  to  an  historical  and  critical  one. 


IN    A    TUSCAN    GARDEN 

With  Numerous  Illustrations. 
Crown  Svo.     5s.  net. 

Times. — "  The  book  is  brightly  written,  and  the  author's  know- 
ledge of  Italian  life,  or  rather  of  the  life  of  a  foreigner  in  Italy, 
is  remarkably  full ;  moreover  she  has  a  sharp  eye  for  the  follies  of 
her  countrymen,  and  exposes  them  with  tartness  that  is  amusing 
enough." 

Westminster  Gazette. — "  Those  who  intend  settling  temporarily 
or  permanently  in  Italy  will  find  the  volume  of  more  practical 
use  to  them  than  any  other  single  work  we  remember  to  have 
come  across.  .  .  .  We  should  not  like  to  spare  the  volume  from 
our  collection  of  works  on  the  subject." 

Spectator. — "  This  is  a  delightful,  because  delightfully  personal 
yet  not  unpleasantly  egotistic,  book.  .  .  .  The  writer  indulges, 
too,  in  many  asides  on  contemporary  history,  British  national 
characteristics,  and  a  host  of  other  things  which  are  invariably 
shrewd,  and  never  malicious." 

Morning  Post. — "  The  reader  wtll  scarcely  fail  to  find  sornething 
charming  on  every  page." 


UNDER    PETRAIA 

By  the  Author  of  "  IN  A  TUSCAN  GARDEN.*' 

With  Numerous  Illustrations. 
Crown  2>vo.     5s.  net. 

Daily  Telegraph. — "  The  kindliness  and  geniality  of  the  whole 
thing  is  irresistible, for  it  recalls  the  spirit  of  Borrow,  to  whom  sun, 
moon  and  stars  were  all  good  things." 

Westminster  Gazette.—"  How  delightful  it  is  on  a  bleak  day  in 
spring  to  take  up  such  a  pleasant  little  book  of  Italian  reminis- 
cences '  Under  Petraia,'  by  the  author  of  '  In  a  Tuscan  Garden.' 
The  charm  of  the  book  lies  in  the  power  of  the  author  to  recreate 
the  scenes  one  knows  so  well." 

Globe. — "  For,  purely  conversational  in  style  as  this  book  is,  it 
preserves  that  indefinable  charm  which  holds  fast  the  reader  who 
has  opened  its  pages  so  that  he  cannot  put  it  down  till  he  has 
reached  the  end.  And  even  then  it  will  be  taken  up  again  and 
again,  to  be  dipped  into  as  the  fancy  seizes  us." 


M 


ITALIAN  VILLAS  AND  THEIR 

GARDENS 

By  EDITH  WHARTON.  With  numerous  Full- 
page  Illustrations  by  Maxfield  Parrish,  of  which 
1 2  are  finely  printed  in  Colour.  Royal  8vo.  2 1  s.net. 

West  minster  Gazette. — "A  genuine  piece  of  artistic  criticism 
dealing  with  an  ancient  and  beautiful  form  of  art.  .  .  .  The  book 
is  beautifully  illustrated.  .  .  .  Mr.  Parrish  enters  thoroughly  into 
the  feeling  of  the  Italian  garden,  and  delights  in  its  formal  designs 
and  massive  effects  of  light  and  shade." 

Saturday  Review.  —  "Mr.  Maxfield  Parrish's  drawings  are 
deserving  of  a  full  measure  of  credit  in  the  production  of  a  beauti- 
ful and  valuable  book." 

A  QUEEN  OF  INDISCRETIONS 

The  Tragedy  of  Caroline  of  Brunswick,  Queen 
of  England.  From  the  Italian  of  G.  P.  Clerici. 
Translated  by  Frederic  Chapman.  With 
numerous  Illustrations  reproduced  from  contem- 
porary Portraits  and  Prints.  Demy  8vo.  21/- net. 

Daily  Telegraph. — "  It  could  scarcely  be  done  more  thoroughly 
or,  on  the  whole,  in  better  taste  than  is  here  displayed  by  Professor 
Clerici.  Mr.  Frederic  Chapman  himself  contributes  an  uncom- 
monly interesting  and  well-informed  introduction." 

Times. — "  Signor  Clerici  has  brought  to  his  task  immense  pains, 
lucidity  and  an  impartiality  of  mind  which  does  not  prevent  a 
definite  view  from  emerging.  Mr.  Chapman  has  done  the  trans- 
lation admirably  well,  and  his  own  introduction  is  a  careful 
assistance  to  thoroughness." 

ITALIAN  LYRISTS  OF  TO-DAY 

By  G.  A.  GREEN.  Translations  in  the  original 
metres  from  about  35  living  Italian  Poets.  With 
Bibliographical  and  Biographical  Notes.  Crown 
8vo.     5/-  net. 

ON    THE    TRACKS    OF    LIFE 

THE  IMMORALITY  OF  MORALITY 
Translated  from  the  Italian  of  Leo.  G.  Sera  by 
J.M.Kennedy.  With  an  Introduction  by  Dr. Oscar 
Levy.    Demy  8vo.    9x5!  inches.    Price  7/6  net. 

Daily  Chronicle.—"  A  verj'  frank  expression  of  the  side  of 
thought  which  regards  the  assertion  of  individuality  as  the  first 
duty  of  the  individual." 

s 


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